Señor Vivo and the coca lord

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

'Sharp, funny, engaging' Financial Times

Discover the second gripping novel in Louis de Bernières' satricial tragic, hilarious South American trilogy.

Dionisio Vivo, a South American lecturer in philosophy, is puzzled by the bodies that keep turning up outside his front door.

To his friend, Ramon, one of the few honest policemen in town, the message is all too clear: Dionisio's letters to the press, exposing the drug barons, must stop; and although Dionisio manages to escape the hit-men sent to get him, he soon realises that others are more vulnerable, and his love for them leads him to take a colossal revenge.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

In an unnamed South American country, President Veracruz practices sexual alchemy, after which his wife gives birth to a large cat and the people of one community mate with dolphins taking human form. Here, magic and myth are incorporated into daily life. Here, too, coca production destroys communities, filling whole villages with vacant zombies serving the coca lord, El Jereca. A young teacher of philosophy, Dionisio Vivo, who traces his ancestry through a series of incredible historical events, condemns the disease eating away at his country through a regular flow of letters to the local paper. Soon El Jereca responds. Dionisio finds corpses, whole and in parts, disposed at his door. Still the letters continue, and Dionisio becomes a hero in his country; women camp on the outskirts of his town waiting to bear his child. But Dionisio loves Anica, whose father supplies weapons to El Jereca's thugs, and their love must survive persistent attacks. De Bernieres creates an enjoyable story where magic and love of mythological proportions combats destruction. For most collections.-- Brack Stovall, Carrollton P.L., Tex. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

The wild satire and inventive fantasy that marked de Bernieres' first novel, The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, reverberate through this audacious story of drug trafficking, corruption, love and murder. In an unnamed South American country resembling Colombia, Dionisio Vivo, a fearless philosophy professor who exposes the country's illegal coca trade in a letter-writing campaign to a leading newspaper, miraculously evades repeated assassination attempts. But his best friend, Ramon, a policeman, and his sweetheart, Anica, who is sexually assaulted by the drug baron's goons, do not escape the cocaine cartel's wrath. Dionisio, who converses telepathically with animals and walks everywhere accompanied by two black jaguars, takes his revenge in a series of events by turns ribald, surreal, horrific, uproarious and tragic. The supernatural constantly intrudes on a landscape of cruel poverty, as exemplified by Father Garcia, a levitating priest, and Lazaro, a hermaphroditic leper cured by a sorcerer. Yet de Bernieres, who lives in London, makes us keenly aware of the drug trade's corrosive effects on a society where drive-by murders are commonplace. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

In a sad, funny, pointed novel dedicated "to the Honored and Respected Memory of Judge Mariela Espinosa Arango, Assassinated by Machine-Gun Fire in Medellin, on Wednesday, November 1, 1989," de Bernieres blends magic and madness to portray life in a nation controlled by drug thugs. A philosophy professor, secretly the son of a general, Dionisio Vivo is in most respects an ordinary fellow; he insists, however, on writing letters to La Prensa calling for action against the drug lords. Vivo's policeman friend Ramon, who carries off the corpses left at Vivo's door from time to time, declares that he is in danger and should leave town. But Vivo is falling in love with Anica, the daughter of a semiretired gunrunner, and he's had several near-miraculous escapes from the padrino's hired assassins. Meanwhile, politicians and bureaucrats debate alternative policies and, in trying to take over the town of Cochadebajo de los Gatos, drug lord El Jerarca encounters unexpected opposition led by Hectoro, who died in a 1533 avalanche but was brought back to life by a sorcerer. Praise can be expected for this tale of tragedy and triumph. ~--Mary Carroll

Kirkus Book Review

De Bernières's prefab magic realism, first on display in The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (Feb. 1992), has another strenuous but hardly less ersatz workout in this successor, wherein a crusading philosophy professor turns mythic hero. Dionisio Vivo teaches at a South American university and writes fiery letters to the newspaper about the coca trade's implacable destructiveness. The druglords, and the comic-opera national government, pay no attention until Vivo attracts great public support and becomes something of a cult figure. They ultimately will get to Vivo by destroying his great ladylove, Anica; but since Vivo and everyone else in the book has access to metamorphosis and magic, his revenge is sovereign and unanswerable. As with the earlier book: If you'd never read García Márquez, this might be charming; if you have, it merely seems forced. ``At last the time came for them to make the arduous journey to Valledupar, a city so frivolous that the natives hang pineapples on lemon trees just to confuse the tourists, and the same place that General Fuerte's donkey had once given birth to kittens.'' Not only Valledupar--this entire novel. Mechanically transposed and derivative stuff.