Pandemic of Lies - The Exile (Hardcover)

President Alejandro has an insatiable thirst for power. In just two years, he has seized control of nearly every major branch of the government and two television stations that pepper the airwaves with self-indulgent propaganda-all without a coup d'etat. At one time, Manuel was not only President Alejandro's good friend, but also his presidential advisor. But when Alejandro makes a covert state visit to Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro, Manuel takes revenge. Soon Alejandro's wife and their children are leaving Banador for Europe; she wants a divorce, and Alejandro wants nothing more than for Manuel to disappear forever.

In a last attempt to save his life, Manuel helps Alejandro's political opponent defeat his former friend in the upcoming presidential election-but as turmoil continues to swirl around him, he wonders if he will ever be able to trust anyone again.

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Wed, 8 Jun 2011 | Review by: Beatrice F.

The novel Pandemic of Lies: The Exile is indeed a sui generis work of art. It is a book of fiction written in English by a Cuban-American author living in a Spanish-speaking country, namely Ecuador, and dealing with events that occur mostly in a mythical South American nation called Banador. Another unique element found in the book is the fact that the Machiavellian genius of a president who rules Banador is a homosexual haunted by the existence of an unauthorized video CD that shows him making love to his minister of government. The explicit nature of the VCD makes President Alejandro Salvador attempt to control all three branches of government, including what is considered the fourth one: the media or press. The protagonist of the book, Manuel Cruz, a Cuban-American like the author, comes to live in the Latin American country of Banador with a set of values quite different from the one that prevails there. He has a strong appreciation for truth, but in Banador too much truth can get you killed; and this is what could possibly happen to Manuel, who cannot conceive not only how corruption can be allowed to run rampant in front of a president’s nose but also how Alejandro Salvador is incapable of coming to terms with his own sexuality and refuses to step out of the closet and announce to the world his true nature for the sake of truth. The novel is full of ironies and reversals of roles which I cannot go into without ruining the suspense for future readers of this political thriller. The point of view is exclusively first person. We are always in the mind of the main character, Manuel Cruz. This contributes to the imminence and realism of the narration. However, although the protagonist remains throughout most of the novel confined to a hut and its immediate surroundings composed of a river, rice fields, and a marsh, Manuel’s mind wanders to his remote as well as recent past while he attempts to find an answer to his present predicament of self-imposed exile. Through this interior monologue or narrative, we are allowed to travel to places such as Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Havana, Miami, and Bogota. The book deals with political theory based on current geopolitical events, but the element of existential intimacy and immediacy is never lost as the plot develops and reaches a dénouement suddenly set on a vertiginous pace that leaves you breathless. I would even say that the book belongs more to the literary genre than to the suspense one, although many whodunit and cliffhanger ingredients prevail in the work. The author Pedro C. Lopez, in his style of imaginative writing, comes across as an interesting mixture of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka, and Stieg Larsson. Lopez exhibits the same preoccupation and even obsession with conscience as Dostoyevsky and creates a fantastic character in the form of a talking giant Galapagos turtle reminiscent of Kafka’s insect-like Gregor Samsa. Lopez also denounces the cancerous innards of a Banadorian political society as rotten to the core as that of Larsson’s own in Sweden. Although the first two literary giants did not write a trilogy, Lopez claims in his blog that he has already started the second volume of his literary triad—Pandemic of Lies: The Resurrection.

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