One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez was born in 1927 in Columbia and died in 2014 in Mexico City.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude was published in 1967. It is the story of 7 generations of starting with José Arcadio Buendía.

I can really feel the influence of Don Quixote, but Marquez has his own brand of existential absurdity, solitude and the labyrinths of confusion. There's something about the way he describes families over time that doesn't feel too abstract or remote. Every once in a while I think he slips in something impossible to make sure you are awake, like fish swimming in humid air during rain. I think that is where the "magical realism" comes in, though genera labels are notoriously vague.

I feel like this might be the kind of book I read every year for a while until I get tired of it.

Links:

Vanity Fair article.

The Atlantic has an interesting article entitled "How One Hundred Years of Solitude Became a Classic"

Lecture by Ian Johnson

Comments

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