The Empress of South America

By Nigel Cawthorne

Book Overview

The Empress of South America is the true story of the Irish woman who started the biggest war in the Americas. A redhead from County Cork, Eliza Lynch rose to become the highest paid courtesan in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0434008982
• ISBN13: 9780434008988
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: William Heinemann
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

What a Rumble in the Jungle

This book is nothing other than a rollicking good read from start to finish. The true story of a quite remarkable Irish woman, Eliza Lynch, and her adventures in nineteenth century Paraguay. It's a larger than life biography, a tale of unrelenting action, intrigue, cruelty and the naked pursuit of power with large chunks of sex thrown in. The book gets off to an eerie start in a deserted Parisian graveyard but soon gets into its stride as the eponymous heroine takes herself off to South America where she determines to build a mighty empire with her despotic but incompetant husband, Lopez, the ruler of Paraguay. Hopeless military confrontations with the much more powerful neighbouring Brazil ensue, not to mention the odd skirmish with Argentina and other latin neighbours. The story is littered with almost unimaginable barbarity, acts of torture and slaughter occur with a casual regularity that often defies belief. But Cawthorne never loses the international perspective to these events happening in what was then something of a back water of the developed world and he explains with great clarity how both the British and American ambassadors seek to influence the increasing anarchism Ms Lynch is unleashing. The book has rarely a dull moment and Cawthorne's narrative rattles along at a pace not unakin to the events it describes. Some of the atrocities are gleefully recounted and the author revells in the sexual excesses of Ms Lynch's court, excesses that would have been the envy of De Sade himself! Above all however, it's a great tale, you always want to know what happens next and you can't wait to find out how it all ends. It's amazing that it's a tale that hasn't been told before. It should make one hell of a film!!! I can thoroughly recommend it!

Top of the range

Of all this boy's prodigious output, this is the one you have to read. It combines all the other genres he embraces. There is sex, war, infidelity, comedy, tragedy, infamy and shamelessness. And it is all true. It is hard to imagine that this extraordinary story has been overlooked. When the book was published in the UK, all the newspapers gave it rave reviews. Cawthorne had tackled some arcane subjects before, but here he takes his strange talents to plunge you into South America's heart of darkness.