Amazon.com
A dense jungle of magic and literary gusto, this book pulls you in and engulfs you with its richness and beauty. Saying it is a story of a family is like saying the New Testament is a book about a carpenter. Following the family here reveals the history of several generations, and the passions, thoughts, and myths of a labyrinth of people, related and not. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a gifted writer, and nowhere does he write with the fervor that he does in One Hundred Years of Solitude, a pleasurable ride unmatched in modern literature.Book Description
This the most important novels written by this author which everyone must read. With this novel he won the 1982 Novel Prizze in Literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (66)

La mejor novela de nuestros tiempos! Es obligatorio leerla!
Este es un libro fascinante, lleno de realismo mágico, aventuras, drama y pasión. Un libro con el que se puede identificar cualquier latinoamericano por todo lo que tiene de cotidiano y de supersticioso. La historia tiene ciertas similitudes con la Biblia (Génesis, Exodo, Evangelios) , con las Mil y Una Noches y otras literaturas; lo que hacen que leerla le parezca a uno muy familiar aparte de que el lenguaje que utiliza García Márquez es muy sencillo y cotidiano. Nadie que la lea olvidará jamás a Ursula, o a Fernanda del Carpio, a Remedios la Bella o a cualquiera de los Aurelianos o José Arcadios. Es un libro adictivo para aquellos que dan sus primeros pasos en la buena literatura.

Después del Quijote, la mejor novela escrita en español, pero también la mejor novela contemporanea de nuestros tiempos. Es por eso, impresindible leer esta genial novela.

Un atractivo extra de esta edición son las notas al pie de página que da Jacques Joset, que permiten al lector aclarar muchas dudas acerca de donde tomá el autor nombres de personajes o de lugares. A mi en lo personal, me resulto mucho más interesante, ya que tenia ciertas dudas como de donde se inspiró García Márquez para hablar del Duque de Marlborough, de Rocamadour, o de Francisco El Hombre.

I hate this book!!!!
It's well-written and the characters arewell developed, but I must say that the story is just horrible. I'm sorry, but if this is the best literature of Latin America, I'd rather not read anymore of it. I really don't know why people like this book!
I'll stick to good Brazilian literature, such as Machado de Assis.

Cien años de soledad
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's masterpiece describes the history of Latin America with the Buendía family through Marquez's use of magic-realism.The novel takes the reader on a journey where anything and everything is possible.This is the heart of Latin America.

The day that the magic realism invaded the literature!
What definitively marked this subduing novel throughout the Pantheon of the immortality was to have got the perfect balance between an organic depicting coherence and a winged concatenation of fevered delirium; the accurate involvement between Eros and Psyche, that invisible sensation of getting into a new universe of unlimited possibilities, where we agree to become accomplices of this master of ceremony; wizard of the dreamy landscapes and old shaman of the word.

The multiple web of pertinent circumstances that surround that small village named Macondo were so bewitching interweaved and magically disposed that produced a febrile positive effervescence in the reader, because as the cathartic experience demands, there are neither rules nor roads. The terrible humidity of Macondo overwhelms us and in the meantime leads to new coordinates of the historic perspective, where time and space are badly drawn and the sensation of vertigo and insecurity involves the reader.


With this work, Garcia Marquez not only achieved that coveted pearl so many times described in Mythology that represents the summon of the creative pinnacle; besides he opened the gate for the rest of the world to discover that famous phrase, wedged by Vasconcelos: "Latin America: the cosmic race"

We can find similar parallelisms if we take a look around: Picasso and Guernica, Schubert and his String Quintet Op.163

This pyramidal feat so many times desired and so few times achieved, not only consolidated the prestige of his creator, but simultaneously allowed the rest of the world to acquire a vertiginous interest for other notable writers of the fantastic literature, such Onetti, Horacio Quiroga, Borges, Bioy Casares, Cortazar or Miguel Angel Asturias.

Horrible book
It seems as though the author's gimmick has worked.Let's write a book in a "circular" time and place pattern and confuse the hell out of all the readers.Yes, we get it, the style of writing is symbolic of the cycle of life described in the book: it is a never-ending cyclic nightmare!What most annoys me about this book, however, is the literary snobbery of pseudo-literary fans who drop the name Gabriel Garcia Marquez as if he were the biggest literary genius of all time just because he wrote a book with almost no punctuation and a jumbled up storyline!Yes, life in the Caribbean is just as frustrating as this book, and no, don't live there or read this book if you don't want to drive yourself nuts. ... Read more

Book Description
This one of the most important novels written by this author which everyone must read. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Este libro se disfruta de principio a fin
El libro comienza de una manera muy original, por el final. El lector percibe esta idea pero resulta intrigante la manera en que el autor sigue desarrollando la historia atravez de las paginas. Es un libro muy divertidoy muestra la idiosincracia latinoamericana de una manera colorida

Un misterio que nunca podra ser revelado
Lo que siempre me intrigara de esta excelente novela es si fue o no fue Santiago Nasar "el autor" de Angela Vicario. Si uno lo analizapor la reaccion final de la victima, quizas no, pero si uno se atiene a laconfesion, aun mucho tiempo despues, de la supuesta doncella, quizas si.Como ven, cada lector tendra su propia opinion. Pobre Santiago Nasar!, yfelices nosotros que hemos podido leerla historia.

This book is interesting!!!
This book talks about a woman that gets married but in her honey moon her husband notices that she is not a virgin so he takes her back to her parents.They try to ask her who was the guy who made her lost hervirginity but she doesnt tell.They think that Santiago Nasar was the manso the girl's brothers try to kill him.The whole town knows about thisbut Santiago himself.The brothers are looking for him and when theyfinally do they run after him and kill him in front of his doorsteps. ... Read more

Product Description
The Real Academia Española celebrates the 40th Anniversary of Garcia Marquez s masterpiece in this beautiful commemorative edition. Prologues by Carlos Fuentes, Alvaro Mutis, Mario Vargas Llosa and other intellectuals.One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.-New York Times Book Review ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Excelente libro
Este es un excelente libro. Gabo en su total esplendor. Una vez que lo comienzas a leer no podrás dejarlo.

Cien Anos de Soledad

Gabriel Garcia Marques' best work.Romance, history, and fantasy combined.A must have.

A masterpice beautifully reprintedI have
Leí este libro hace anos cuando primero fue publicadoy lo he regaladovarias veces a mis amigos. Es un
libro que quiero en mi biblioteca personal y esdta nueva edición es un tesoro, el texto y los comentarios.

O tempora! O mores!
This is a (seriously) great novel... one of the strongest reasons to learn Spanish.... If you don't like it, don't blame the novel... Blame the times you are living in... Times, indeed, blind to true beauty and greatness...

Maravilloso!
Inicia la historia con la boda de Ursula Iguaran y Jose Arcadio Buendia, la busqueda de un pueblo ideal donde vivir, la angustia de la espera de los hijos, angustia debido a la supersticion ya que eran primos y les habian dicho que sus hijos podrian nacer con cola de cerdo!...

Una historia completamente llena de cultura latinoamericana, donde la supersticion, hechiceria, leyendas, herencias, costumbres y etc's no fallan. Esta edicion viene acompañada entre otras cosas de un arbol genealogico que te es de gran ayuda, ya que despues de algunas generaciones de Jose Arcadios y Aurelianos.. pues es sabio recurrir a el.

Siempre he admirado la manera tan descriptiva de Garcia Marquez, pero con este titulo desde la primera persona hasta la ultima, arboles, esquinas y lo que gusten nombrar a todo se le otorga una historia, es un maestro!
... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Fantastic!
Only an author as talented as Gabriel Garcia Marques is able to write a novel which its name tells you the end and you still can't stop reading it. Fantastic!

Non Traditional Novel, MASTERPIECE
First things first.Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a NOBEL price winner.He is a highly recognized writer.Honestly, I might not be qualified to critique his caliber.

Some of his writings are not easy to read.This one is short, but an atypical masterpiece.It is used in College as an example of a novel that does not follows the traditional introduction - climax - resolution path.Instead the writer returns back in time in every chapter and "retell" the story from a different character point of view.The main character is killed in every one of the chapters!And the poor soul was not guilty!

By the way, do give you a little extra time to figure out what is going on.This piece is not hard to read, the Spanish used is more contemporary and concised.But if youfeel a little lost at the begining, it is OK.You are not really at the beginning of the story.You are at one of its many climax-ending points.

YOU WILL LIKE IT.YOU WILL NOT FORGET IT.

Muy Bueno!
I have been learning Spanish for 4 years now, and I have had my share at reading very boring and not very well written books in Spanish, and fortunately, some but very few good ones. One is Lazarillo de Tormes, and another is Cronica de Una Muerte Anunciada de Garcia Marquez. I have to say that even if i didn't know that Garcia Marquez was the man that made the literature of Columbia more noticed all over the world, and won the Nobel Prize for this work, and was most well known and famous for One Hundred Years of Solitude (which i hope to read in Spanish as well), i would have still been enamored into his style and what he represents in his works. Obviously, he's speaking for the culture and heritage of the people, and does it very well that from this book alone we learn a lot about it. At times i wish that in Spanish classes we could read books such as these that represent people in Spanish speaking countries in a better light. In other words, i wish we could read Spanish literature like this. I was surprised in how easily i followed this book without constantly relying on my Spanish dictionary. I highly recommend this book.

Binding is Terrible for this version
Don't be fooled by a cute cover and cheap price. The binding for this edition of the book is terrible. I have gone through three books (and I take good care) because all the pages have fallen out just from bending the book back and forth.

I love Garcia Marquez and he is somebody you will want to read again. But this paperback edition won't allow it - the book will break first!!!

Thanks.

En otras palabras, este edicion del libro es de calidad terrible. Ya han roto tres copias del mismo libro en un mes de estudiarlo, que mucho que trato no romperlo.

Escoga otra edicion si quiere comprar este novela fantastica.

INCREIBLE
Es increible conocer el final de un libro y aun así estar tan intrigado por como sucede o como se llega al final del libro. García Marquez titula claramente su obra Crónica de una Muerte Anunciada porque desde el primer par de hojas ya sabemos que Santiago Nassar va a ser asesinado. Increiblemente las dudas de como? porque? donde? y quien? empiezan a resolverse a lo largo de las páginas. Al final, armamos el rompecabezas, y todo parece caer en su lugar. Definitivamente es una de las mejores obras descriptivas de lengua española, y definitivamente una historia que se debe leer y que se va a recordar. ... Read more

Book Description
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Gabriel García Márquez’s most political novel is the tragic story of General Simón Bolívar, the man who tried to unite a continent.

Bolívar, known in six Latin American countries as the Liberator, is one of the most revered heroes of the western hemisphere; in García Márquez’s brilliant reimagining he is magnificently flawed as well. The novel follows Bolívar as he takes his final journey in 1830 down the Magdalena River toward the sea, revisiting the scenes of his former glory and lamenting his lost dream of an alliance of American nations. Forced from power, dogged by assassins, and prematurely aged and wasted by a fatal illness, the General is still a remarkably vital and mercurial man. He seems to remain alive by the sheer force of will that led him to so many victories in the battlefields and love affairs of his past. As he wanders in the labyrinth of his failing powers–and still-powerful memories–he defies his impending death until the last.

The General in His Labyrinth is an unforgettable portrait of a visionary from one of the greatest writers of our time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

Death as an unavoidable human hazard
G.G. Márquez wrote a forceful, naturalistic evocation of the last years of South-America's most ambitious and most important statesman, Simón Bolivár. It is a real `horror story'.
Simón Bolivár's aim was to create a United States of South-America. He chased his outside enemy, Spain, from the continent, but could not defeat his inside enemy, the oligarchies, who `had declared war to death against the idea of integrity because it was unfavorable to the local privileges of the great families.'
As Simón Bolivár has said himself: `Everything I've done has been for the sole purpose of making this continent into a single, independent country. All the rest is bullsh.t.'
Simón Bolivár fought for an idea, not for personal gain or for special interests. Even on his deathbed he planned to fight for his goal against the oligarchies.
He was the great `Liberator', but he ended as `I'm old, sick, tired, disillusioned, harassed, slandered, and unappreciated.'

G.G. Márquez brushes a powerful, brutal picture of the political defeat and the corporal decline of a great man.
It is a bitter, pessimistic and realistic book.
Not to be missed.

Slow but rewarding read
Márquez moves slowly through the final chapter in the saga of a great man and historical figure. Sometimes frustratingly so. But I think this may be intentional on the author's part. After all, Bolívar is renowned throughout Latin America for his tireless efforts to free the wayward continent and, when he had accomplished that, to prevent it from falling to shambles. The slow pace of the book reveals Bolívar as the tired soul he had become after so much fighting, so much toil that suddenly seemed to count for nothing. It is not a book about battles for independence or monetary gain; instead it focuses on the constant battle against death and despair.
Most enjoyable of all in the book are the small gems of prescience on the part of Bolívar--whether taken directly from historical documents or imparted on the general by Márquez--in which the old soldier predicts the pitfalls and chaos that will consume his land in the next 150 years. Though it's painful to read the cynical declarations of a man who has dedicated his life to a goal he now realizes is hopeless, these very pronunciations are what sets Márquez's General apart as a realistic and tragic character.
Though I found some parts difficult to trudge through, the book succeeds as a historical narrative, in that it provides insight into an entire continent's evolution through the eyes of one man.

Solid, But Certainly Not His Best
For those of us who have come to love Marquez, this book comes as a slight disappointment. The story of Bolivar's final journey and his relationship both with a myriad of women and with his servant is full of interesting insights and anecdotes, but lacks the kind of beauty, especially in respects to setting and language, that his previous work displays. Maybe it's because he was trying to honor or at least chronicle an important figure in South American history, but the novel seems too confined in scope. Marquez is forced to confine his normally tangential and often beautiful descriptions to the life of a celebrated figure. That being said, this book is still a fascinating read and better than most of the novels on the market today.

Distressingly soporific
I have a feeling that Gabo should have just let Alvaro Mutis sit on this project.Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of at least three (really entertaining and pleasurable) masterpieces of fiction (One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, and the short stories of Strange Pilgrims), seems to have entered into a lull during the writing of The General in His Labyrinth.The best expression I can think of to classify this book is "distressingly soporific".The General (Simon Bolivar) always seems to be lying in the "aguas depurativas de la bañera" and the story moves as slowly as an old man's body (with apology to agile old men).There's barely a climax, and you were expecting it anyway: Bolivar dies.Meanwhile, Bolivar reflects on his political experiences and rather libertine love life, and treks with his entourage into exile.If you haven't read a lot of Garcia Marquez, try his masterpieces, and then his deep and satisfying memoir (Living to Tell the Tale), and don't bother with The General in his Labyrinth.

Couldn't get through it
I tried and tried to keep reading this book, but it wasn't interesting to me.The General was a pathetic old man who seemed to be living a life of self pity.I got tired of his whining.I know Gabriel Garcia Marquez is very respected for his writing, but I just couldn't get into it.I guess I prefer books that I feel I have something to learn or are atleast entertaining. ... Read more

Book Description
This one of the most important novels written by this author which everyone must read. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

A journey for the senses!
Is a talent for Marquez to describe daily life events with such maestry that invites your senses to let go and transport to the moment with the characther, you can taste the coffee, smell the rooms, is simply amaizing, strongly reccomend!

A good read
Marquez writes in such a way that you find yourself in Macondo, living along the coronel, seeing what he sees and feeling immersed in a simple life where after all is stripped away through time, hope remains.It is that which we all can feel as we too wait, with determination, with hope, even if there is nothing left.

La esperanza como ultimo recurso!
Historia de penumbras y congojas, de zozobras y desasosiegos; de ilusiones perdidas que reavivan con menor esplendor cada vez que el Coronel recibe un No como respuesta en la Oficina de Correos.

El Coronel es una aguda e incisiva metafora que se anida en la memoria maltratada y desamparada de seres quienes vieron pasar lo mejor de sus vidas al arraigo de una promesa, del pago puntual de una merecida pension por servicios prestados. El tiempo y el olvido son dos viejos amigos, y esa espera cotidiana se convierte en el unico asidero esperanzador que alimenta el deseo de vivir de un hombre ya olvidado, relegado por los nuevos tiempos, protagonista de hazanas crepusculares que inflaman la imaginacion historica y poetica, pero que poco o nada dicen a las nuevas generaciones.

Una de las joyas cimeras de la Literatura Latinoamericana, El Coronel tiene ese sabor obsesivo del Tango, de lo que pudo haber sido y no fue. Este militar es un miembro mas de una legion de seres quienes vivieron seducidos por la palabra y aplastados por el burocratismo y el populismo. Poco importan las coordenadas geograficas y el entorno historico. El subdesarrollo, entendido como la incapacidad de transformacion, no tiene edad, pues como mala hierba, se reproduce en cualquier rincon de la naturaleza.

Soberbio e inolvidable relato de este ilustre escritor colombiano, Premio Nobel de Literatura 1984.

Una alegoría de la propia vida humana.
Gabriel García Marquez hace con esta novela una alegoría de la propia vida humana, reflejada en la figura del coronel , Don Sabas, su mujer, su hijo, el gallo... todos los elementos de la vida humana y especialmente de la vida en LatinoAmérica en esa época.
El coronel no tiene quien le escriba trata de un coronel que vive en un país en estado de sitio o excepción y que después de haver luchado toda su vida por su nación lleva 19 años esperando una carta del govierno para cobrar su pensión.
El coronel vivia de lo que llevaba a casa su hijo, y ahora que su hijo murió asesinado por repartir panfletos ilegales y no tiene nada que vender, lo único que le queda es el gallo, que su hijo le dejó como herencia y que es de alguna manera lo único que le queda de orgullo a este coronel.
El coronel tiene que decidir entre mantener el gallo hasta enero que empiezen las peleas y dejarse a él mismo y a su mujer sin comida o bien vender el gallo y ganar un dinero que le irá muy bien.
Una auténtica reflexión sobre el sentido de la vida humana.

Tipico de el....
La Historia de un coronel retirado que tiene bastante tiempo esperando su pension. Narra las penurias que pasan el y su esposa tras la siempre espera de dicha "ayuda" del gobierno, se alimentan de esperanza y otros dias comen realidad..

No creo que sea ficcion puramente, si hasta en los paises mas desarrollados existen casos de estos, que sera en la america latina? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (100)

The stranger at home
The pitfalls of consumerism: I had bought expensive tickets for uncomfortable seats in a concert of Lorin Maazel and his NY big band. They gave me Rossini, Mozart, and Brahms, and all was nice and as expected, and that was highly unsatisfactory, because we want to have our expectations exceeded.
So I went home grumbling and picked up this little book from my daughter's bookshelf. And then GGM made things right for me. Far better than expected. Not just the colorful tale of a macho braggard that the title might suggest. Rather something like a retrospective bucket list. Lots of enchanting observations on age.
'My notion of youth was so flexible I never thought it was too late.' Let's buy him a ticket to the Nicholson movie.
'I was tormented by the little daemon who whispers into our ear the devastating replies that we didn't give.' See: that's the advantage of Amazon, we can change our statements.
For some of my AFs: there is a cat in the story, and lots of music!
And by the way, the Noble committee did get it right once in a while.

Beautiful story of old age and love
I am new to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's work, but having read and enjoyed "Love in the Time of Cholera", I wanted more. My family is Colombian, and the way Marquez describes the scenery and everything around the main character, I can actually picture it, as well as understand the cultural nuances. This story is a nameless older man, who having never married, decides to spend his ninetieth birthday with a virgin. Instead of enjoying the carnal pleasure, he finds her asleep, and is enamored of how young and beautiful she is. He begins to make a habit ofgoing to the brothel just to watch her sleep. As time passes, he comes to fall in love with this girl that he's never met, but has only watched sleep. His curmudgeon ways change, and he comes to love life, and realize what a better place the world is when you have love. A great read.

AMAZING!
Not only is the my all time favorite Garcia Marquez book, it's one of my most favorite books ever. I've read several of his books and this one was especially good. So beautifully written, I got totally lost in it and couldn't put it down till I was done!

Short but Worthwhile
Another reviewer said that this shouldn't be your first Marquez novel...but it was mine.

In a premise that feels even more outrageous these days with so much information available about child abuse and prostitution around the globe, this novel (novella) manages to steer away from a horrific, sordid reality to dig deeply into a 90-year-old man's discovery of love.Never mentioning his own name, the old man decides to celebrate his 9th decade by deflowering a teenage virgin in a brothel he's used for most of his adult life.Sad details of his empty experience and disconnected life leak out as he prepares for his memorable birthday.

But if you're reading this for taboo titillation, think again: the story takes a different route as the Old Man makes some interesting new discoveries while reflecting on his sexual past.

Comparing this story to Nabokov's LOLITA, Humbert falls for his nymphet and eventually takes her, suffering for his love and ultimately paying with his life (both figuratively and literally) but the Old Man here can't bring himself to bite that apple, so to speak, and eventually falls more deeply in love with his slumbering teen.

The story follows the next year as the Old Man becomes weary, weathered, desirous, yearning, young, making observations on a wasted life and the renewing power of love at any age.

I only wished there was more (what was behind the murder of the banker?would more remembrances of the girls he paid for slow the book down?).There was some really solid writing here, well worth reading.

Check it out.

A Fresh Read
A short novel of good quality. Read it due to curiosity stemmed from its recent ban in Iran. Enjoyed it and am glad I did read this interesting novel although it was a short one. ... Read more

Book Description
In Barcelona, an aging Brazilian prostitute trains her dog to weep at the grave she has chosen for herself. In Vienna, a woman parlays her gift for seeing the future into a fortunetelling position with a wealthy family. In Geneva, an ambulance driver and his wife take in the lonely, apparently dying ex-President of a Caribbean country, only to discover that his political ambition is very much intact.

In these twelve masterly stories about the lives of Latin Americans in Europe, García Márquez conveys the peculiar amalgam of melancholy, tenacity, sorrow, and aspiration that is the émigré experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

Literary Magic from a Literary Master

The author Gabriel Garcia Marquez is well known as a master of the novel, something which the current movie adaptation of his LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA confirms very well. The twelve stories that comprise his STRANGE PILGRIMS demonstrate he's also something of a magician when it comes to shorter fiction as well.

On one level, these are tales of fantastic adventures and encounters experienced by Latin Americans both in their native lands and as they make their way around the world. On a wholly different level, the stories address the more universal and sometimes disturbing question of individual human identity and destiny. On whatever level a reader engages them, they provide first-rate provocative entertainment as well as ample evidence of why Garcia Marquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981.

Marquez is celebrated worldwide for his skillful use of magical realism but in these stories moves beyond the formula to create some of the best work from one of the best writers in the business. Inhabiting these tales are saints, clairvoyants, ex-presidents, and specters. Rounding out this already compelling cast are mesmerizing portraits of such famous individuals as the poets Pablo Neruda and Aime' Cesaire. This book dazzles and satisfies in ways that few books can.

by Author-Poet Aberjhani
author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File Library of American History)
and founder of Creative Thinkers International

Reviw of Strange Pilgrams
More examples of great story telling by the master.I don't believe anyone has put down one of his stories without finishing it.It is difficult not to read the whole book at one sitting. Add it to the Garcia Marquez shelf and enjoy it again and again with the others.

Magical
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a gift to the world.He produces stories that are full of mystery and magic.My favorite in this collection: an old prostitute who trains her dog to walk to the cemetery and cry over her grave.A good introduction to the master, Strange Pilgrims will keep you to the end.

A wonderful collection
"Strange Pilgrims" is a wonderful, but sometimes overlooked, collection of 12 short stories from the Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The stories that compose the collection vary in length and quality, but even the less successful among them are worthy of the reader's attention. The stand-out stories include "The Saint", "Maria dos Prazeres", "Miss Forbes's Summer of Happiness" and "I Only Came to Use the Phone" -- a bizarre and haunting tale of a young woman whose car breaks down in a Spanish desert, on a rainy afternoon. She is unwittingly picked up as a hitchhiker and mistaken for a mental patient who is taken to an asylum. This theme, of the familiar merging with the nightmarish is explored again in "The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow."

In "I Sell My Dreams", the protagonist meets Pablo Neruda ("He moved through the crowd like an invalid elephant, with a child's curiosity in the inner workings of each thing he saw, for the world appeared to him as an immense wind-up toy with which life invented itself") and discusses the labyrinths of Borges, among other things. "Light is Like Water", a charming ode to the power of a child's imagination, is a story brimming with surreal imagery.

These 12 tales perfectly define the genre of 'magical realism'. The collection also seems like a fine place to start for those seeking to familiarize themselves with the work of Garcia Marquez, before tackling epic novels like "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera". These are the kinds of stories that seem to stick in the reader's memory and welcome repeated readings.

Colombian Magical Realism Hits Europe
I wonder if Garcia-Marquez is capable of writing a bad story.Certainly this selection of twelve are like polished gemstones.They might not be shiny or scintillating, but they are so solid, so satisfying.Each of them centers around Latin Americans, mostly Colombians, and their strange experiences in Europe.Back in South America, they move in familiar patterns, they feel at home, but in Europe, unknown and unseen forces affect them, they are prey to the pitfalls of strangeness, they can't see anything coming until it runs them over.While the gigantic geography, turbulent history,and luxuriant and untamed nature of South America fosters magical realism in authors, at least in Garcia-Marquez and some of the other greats, they also produce characters very much larger than life.Europe has always seemed to me a much tamer place, having reduced uncertainty over centuries--- more set in its ways, with fewer surprises, established, sedate.Garcia-Marquez perhaps sees it in a similar way and it unnerves his Latin American protagonists.An ex-dictator lives in a student garret, sells his jewels, and undergoes a useless operation.A woman disappears "by accident" into a mental institution and a playboy dithers in a cheap Paris hotel, not knowing a word of French, while his young wife dies in a hospital.A postal clerk spends years trying to see the Pope to convince him of his daughter's saintly qualities.He lugs the deceased but uncorrupted daughter around in a huge case. An aged ex-prostitute feels death is at her door, but actually it is something else.Nobody really feels at home, nobody can trust their feelings, because everything works differently.Europe isn't exactly an alien place for them, but they are, each time, unwitting victims of the unexpected.

Garcia-Marquez is one of those authors who seem to write about ordinary people whose lives take strange twists.But the worlds they inhabit, the people around them, the very fabric of their existence seem to me utterly fantastic.His talent lies not in presenting ordinary life, but extraordinary life.You accept a little more, a little more until suddenly you find yourself believing in the unbelievable.In the great warrens of Western civilization, but also in the daily grinds of Asia, Africa, or Latin America, life may take interesting paths, or curious twists, but for the most part, it is very predictable.These stories all have only the veneer of predictability; underneath the realism is full of spooky holes.Yet, that is not only due to a magical tone as in novels like "The Autumn of the Patriarch" or "One Hundred Years of Misunderstanding", it is due to the author's constant combination of known daily life with near-fantasy.You can hardly draw the line between them, so closely does he knit.Great stories by a truly great talent.Read them.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

El olor a García Marquez
Si leyera este libro sin conocer el autor, no dudaría ni un instante en saber que fue escrito por García Marquez. Su inconfundible estilo, descriptivo, lleno de vida, infinitamente latinoamericano, salta al ojo de cualquier lector. El texto esta compuesto, obviamente, por doce cuentos. Los cuales fueron notas periodísticas, guiones de cine, un serial de televisión, etcétera; lo que convierte a este libro en una exquisita ensalada de diferentes historias, ya sean divertidas, de intriga, melodramáticas o simplemente comunes. Peronalmente me encanta "Sólo vine a hablar por teléfono" y "El verano feliz de la señora Forbes". Definitivamente es altamente recomendado. ... Read more

Book Description
In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (407)

Started off good.... but
This book infuzzed a love of reading in me, for the first 200 pages. Then I grew bored with the details and just wanted to know how the story ended.

The beginning is excellent, the middle and end however are left to be desired.

So Boring I Can't Even Get Through It...
I immediately realized within the first 10 pages that this is not my type of book. I found it extremely boring and couldn't even get halfway through it. Perhaps I went into it with the wrong notions of what it was about. I don't think the description on the back cover really explains it well.

Hated it!
I chose this book to read for a book discussion group. After reading the book I nixed the idea of having our club read it. I found it boring and pedantic. The title should be called "Confessions of a Stalker". There is a difference between love and obsession and this guy was clearly nuts. I suppose I could have plodded through it but I found the characters annoying and silly.

I got about halfway through and just had to stop. Life is just too short to read crappy books.

so hard to get through
I have always wanted to read this book, and when I finally had the chance, I was really disappointed.The story itself--the idea of the story--was really romantic and wonderful.Getting from the start to the end was the problem--it just dragged.It was truly difficult to get through it and I just didn't love it at all.It ended up being a tough read for me--I finished it only because I wanted to know how it would end, not because I was enjoying it.In the end, I sighed with relief that I was finally finished.

Love in the time of Cholera
Very well written. You can choose not to finish some books. This one you will want to know how it ends. ... Read more

Book Description
This one of the most important novels written by this author which everyone must read. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

A journey for the senses!
Is a talent for Marquez to describe daily life events with such maestry that invites your senses to let go and transport to the moment with the characther, you can taste the coffee, smell the rooms, is simply amaizing, strongly reccomend!

A good read
Marquez writes in such a way that you find yourself in Macondo, living along the coronel, seeing what he sees and feeling immersed in a simple life where after all is stripped away through time, hope remains.It is that which we all can feel as we too wait, with determination, with hope, even if there is nothing left.

La esperanza como ultimo recurso!
Historia de penumbras y congojas, de zozobras y desasosiegos; de ilusiones perdidas que reavivan con menor esplendor cada vez que el Coronel recibe un No como respuesta en la Oficina de Correos.

El Coronel es una aguda e incisiva metafora que se anida en la memoria maltratada y desamparada de seres quienes vieron pasar lo mejor de sus vidas al arraigo de una promesa, del pago puntual de una merecida pension por servicios prestados. El tiempo y el olvido son dos viejos amigos, y esa espera cotidiana se convierte en el unico asidero esperanzador que alimenta el deseo de vivir de un hombre ya olvidado, relegado por los nuevos tiempos, protagonista de hazanas crepusculares que inflaman la imaginacion historica y poetica, pero que poco o nada dicen a las nuevas generaciones.

Una de las joyas cimeras de la Literatura Latinoamericana, El Coronel tiene ese sabor obsesivo del Tango, de lo que pudo haber sido y no fue. Este militar es un miembro mas de una legion de seres quienes vivieron seducidos por la palabra y aplastados por el burocratismo y el populismo. Poco importan las coordenadas geograficas y el entorno historico. El subdesarrollo, entendido como la incapacidad de transformacion, no tiene edad, pues como mala hierba, se reproduce en cualquier rincon de la naturaleza.

Soberbio e inolvidable relato de este ilustre escritor colombiano, Premio Nobel de Literatura 1984.

Una alegoría de la propia vida humana.
Gabriel García Marquez hace con esta novela una alegoría de la propia vida humana, reflejada en la figura del coronel , Don Sabas, su mujer, su hijo, el gallo... todos los elementos de la vida humana y especialmente de la vida en LatinoAmérica en esa época.
El coronel no tiene quien le escriba trata de un coronel que vive en un país en estado de sitio o excepción y que después de haver luchado toda su vida por su nación lleva 19 años esperando una carta del govierno para cobrar su pensión.
El coronel vivia de lo que llevaba a casa su hijo, y ahora que su hijo murió asesinado por repartir panfletos ilegales y no tiene nada que vender, lo único que le queda es el gallo, que su hijo le dejó como herencia y que es de alguna manera lo único que le queda de orgullo a este coronel.
El coronel tiene que decidir entre mantener el gallo hasta enero que empiezen las peleas y dejarse a él mismo y a su mujer sin comida o bien vender el gallo y ganar un dinero que le irá muy bien.
Una auténtica reflexión sobre el sentido de la vida humana.

Tipico de el....
La Historia de un coronel retirado que tiene bastante tiempo esperando su pension. Narra las penurias que pasan el y su esposa tras la siempre espera de dicha "ayuda" del gobierno, se alimentan de esperanza y otros dias comen realidad..

No creo que sea ficcion puramente, si hasta en los paises mas desarrollados existen casos de estos, que sera en la america latina? ... Read more

Book Description
On this personal work, García Márquez reveals some of the main keys in the creation of a text, as well as some elements of the complex process of the making of a story, of a fiction settled in words, and, at the same time, he shares some angles of his own creative work. In the words of the author himself:“ What matters most in this world to me is the creative process. What kind of mystery is such so that the simple desire of telling stories become a passion, so that a human being is willing to die for it; to starve, to freeze, anything, in order to be able to do one thing that cannot be seen nor touch and that, if you think of it, is good for nothing?” ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

El título puede no ser aplicable....

Como escritor amateur, me interesó explorar las ideas del maestro García Máarquez, tal vez erróneamente sobrentendidas en el título de esta volumen que reune las experiencias de un taller de cine impartido en Cuba. A través de estas experiencias, y específicamente en este volumen, vemos a un García Máarquez como un guía cierto entre los pensamientos lúdicos y fantásticos de los talleristas. Cualquier lección que se desprenda será subjetiva, y el lector tendrá que hacerse de ella por medio de diálogos largos (y a veces obvios, tal cual la comunicación humana) en el que las reglas del arte de contar un cuento no están claramente señaladas.
Sin embargo, el talento garcíamarqueziano salta a la vista casi propulsando al libro de un tedio largo. Sus comentarios guían y muestran la tarea de un escritor, en especial un guionista, revelando de tal manera las aristas de la creación literaria en sitios perfectamente identificables y contados (pocos) en el texto. Quizá, para aquellos que busquen una guía literaria, haya que referirse a "La Bendita Manía de Contar" con la esperanza de no arrimarse mucho a la sombra de un texto aparentemente instructivo cuyo único objetivo es de servir como referencia a futuros guionistas. ... Read more

Book Description
From the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera comes an extraordinary reading experience, the story of a doomed love affair between a twelve-year-old girl and a bookish priest, three times her age, who's been sent to oversee her exorcism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (56)

can't get enough of him...
this book is very well written...great visuals, rich prose and a fantasy like concept... the characters are deep and passionate and live to believe in something...beautifully sad, sadly beautiful...it plays well to the very end...

Vivid, dark, beautiful
In just a few pages, Mr. Marquez manages to captivate the reader.The canvas he paints with his words is vivid, dark and beautiful.The characters are tragic and brilliant.A very tragic love story set in a time of narrowmindedness and the confines of a church and beliefs inflicted on others by the self appointed righteous.Very very good, compelling and moving.LOVED IT!

Garcia Marquez is splendid!
This is one of the best books I have read from the best Latin American authors. If you know spanish, I recomend you read it in spanish since the language is better developed and the meaning of the story is deeper. I read it in spanish and after I began to read it, I could not stop.
Of Love and Other Demos is a master piece like other novels from my beloved Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Thought provoking novella
In this novella, Marquez explores magical realism--he fuses elements of ordinary events with dreamlike, mythical qualities.The novel's setting is Colonial South America amidst the backdrop of the Inquisition.Sierva Maria, the only child of Marquis de Casalduero, is primarily reared by her housekeeper, Dominga de Adviento "a formidable black woman who ruled the house with an iron fist." Sierva is raised amongst the slaves and becomes vested in their languages and customs.

On her twelfth birthday she is bitten by a dog infected with rabies.Her father, believing Sierva to be possessed by the devil, sends her to the Convent of Santa Clara at the behest of the Bishop.There she is confined to a "solitary pavilion" that had been used as a prison for years.Father Cayetano, a protege and confidante of the Bishop is vested with the mission of "exorcising" the demons from Sierva Maria.He instead becomes possessed with a deep love for her and "burn[s] with the revelation that something immense and irreparable had begun to occur in his life."

One of the central themes Marquez artfully develops is the oppressive and unbending nature of the Catholic Church and how it uses religion to wield its power and stifle any dissension within its realm.Marquez develops this theme by showing how anyone even remotely different from the canons of the Church's perceived notions of propriety such as Sierca and Abernucio (the Jewish physician) is automatically clouded with suspicion and distrust.After spending time observing Sierva at the convent, Father Cayetano,embracing the dictates of reason, suggests that what seems demonic about Sierva--her expertise in multiple African dialects, eating goat testicles, etc. was simply a product of her upbringing with the slaves.The Bishop immediately discounts his rational explanation and warns "The Enemy makes better use of our intelligence than of our errors."Marquez masterfully uses the tale of a simple love story with a basic plot to reflect and meditate on larger questions regarding the hierarchy of power, class, and religion in society.

Books are Worthless (or , On: Love, the Only Demon)
This small piece of gem by Gabo is one of the most fascinating books as far as I'm concerned. To me, the most fascinating character in this book is that of Abrenuncio, a Portuguese Jewish physician, hated by the church and loved by his patients. A man who knows where he stands ("Sex is a talent, and I do not have it."), a man with his feet firmly planted on the ground ("Books are worthless; life has helped me to cure diseases that other doctors cause with their medicines"), and one who understands the fundamentals of healing ("No medicine cures what happiness cannot.". Without a second thought, I would sell my soul to Devil twice over to achieve his qualiities.

Over the years I have met many pompous, wise people, whose unlimited arrogance (because they read some books) and feeling of intellectual superiority have often made me wonder if they know that the world is more than just books. Gabo tells us in this book that the only real source of wisdom that lies in front of us is our life, not books.

This book also highlights the issue of the animosity suffered by a learned man, when his views and actions are in contrast to the interests of the section of the society that controls it. This is a very real situation anyday anywhere in the world.

However, the major theme of the book is (either presence or absense of) love. Can love conquer everything? Gabo's answer is direct, honest and simple: Yes, it can; but it will do you more good if you don't believe in it.

Can one deny love? Or can one evade it? Perhaps not. To drive this point home, the ever irreverent persona in Gabo makes his presence felt, when he makes the exorcist, one of the most knowledgeable and favorable priests, finally fall in love with the victim, whom he comes to exorcise! ... Read more

Book Description
The work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez attracts the interest of cultural historians as well as literary critics as he brings Latin American culture closer to the rest of the world. Numerous works by the author are examined here, including One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Autumn of the Patriarch.

This title, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, part of Chelsea House Publishers' Modern Critical Views series, examines the major works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez through full-length critical essays by expert literary critics. In addition, this title features a short biography on Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a chronology of the author's life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. ... Read more

Amazon.com
During the 1980s, the government of Colombia signed a treaty with the United States allowing for the extradition of Colombian citizens. This caused a great deal of distress among the kingpins of the Medellín drug cartel. Why? Traffickers like Pablo Escobar had spent the decade exporting billions of dollars' worth of cocaine. They weren't likely to be arrested at home, but if extradited and tried in America, they would spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Escobar and his colleagues tried to a cut a deal with the government. Then Escobar decided that a little extralegal pressure--i.e., terrorism--could do no harm. In short order he had 10 prominent Colombians kidnapped; most were journalists, and all had professional or personal ties to the pro-extradition movement. Ultimately two of the hostages were shot. The remaining eight were released in a trickle, as the drug traffickers began to break ranks and surrender. So ended at least one episode in what Gabriel García Márquez calls "the biblical holocaust that has been consuming Colombia for more than twenty years."

García Márquez was originally invited to write about the kidnapping by Maruja Pachon, who spent six months in captivity. As he began to write, however, he realized that her story was inseparable from that of the other nine victims. The result is a meticulous, sobering, and suspenseful book. It is, of course, a work of reportage, which puts a lid on the author's penchant for magic realism. But in the hands of a writer like García Márquez, truth makes fiction look paltry indeed.Book Description
In 1990, fearing extradition to the United States, Pablo Escobar – head of the Medellín drug cartel – kidnapped ten notable Colombians to use as bargaining chips. With the eye of a poet, García Márquez describes the survivors’ perilous ordeal and the bizarre drama of the negotiations for their release. He also depicts the keening ache of Colombia after nearly forty years of rebel uprisings, right-wing death squads, currency collapse and narco-democracy. With cinematic intensity, breathtaking language and journalistic rigor, García Márquez evokes the sickness that inflicts his beloved country and how it penetrates every strata of society, from the lowliest peasant to the President himself. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (31)

War, through the eyes of its victims
Gabriel García Márquez wrote News of a Kidnapping to tell the story of the ordeal of ten Colombian journalists who were abducted and held by Pablo Escobar's drug organization in 1993 and 1994. A native Colombian and Nobel Prize winner for fiction, García Márquez weaves together the story of Maruja Pachón and the other captives, with the story of how Escobar and his Medellin cartel held their country in his power for years while he amassed a fortune, wreaked terror on ordinary people, and bargained for the right to be imprisoned in luxury in the place of his choosing.

Escobar captured prominent journalists Escobar to bring the attention of the country to his demands, and ultimately to have the assistance of the victims' families in making his extradition to the United States illegal. García Márquez tells the stories in a linear fashion - clarifying the political, legislative and legal aspects of the story. At the same time, we see the arbitrary ordeal of the ten captives. Two of the abductees were eventually killed - one outright by the kidnappers and the other in confusion at a critical moment of release and rescue. The others are released over a period of months, after being moved from house to house, with changing groups of guards, and always the uncertainty of the outcome.

While García Márquez clearly has little patience for Escobar and his group, he manages to give the stories a context that makes some sense of them, while acknowledging the inherent insanity of what happens through the long months of captivity, bargaining and exchange. He makes no overt judgments about how the captives, their families, and their guards acted. We are left to understand them through the memories of the months spent together in small spaces, under tension.

Pablo Escobar and his cartel have largely faded from our consciousness of the world today, replaced by other troubles in other places. So much of that drug war took place in a setting difficult to understand, and distressing in the way that far-off troubles can often be - alarming but distant, echoing in someone else's life. In this account, we see what it means to wait month after month without the solace of logic or hope that larger forces can come to our aid, at the mercy of chance, emotion, and the decisions of people we cannot control.

Armchair Interviews says: If you want an intense view of a country at war with itself through the eyes of its victims, pick up News of a Kidnapping. Then try one of Márquez's novels."

Garcia Marquez's non-fiction
I bought this (Spanish edition) at a little shop in Montreal, expecting GGM's usual weird fiction. I was surprised to find that it wasn't weird fiction at all, but a true story (if such a thing exists). Actually, I was very disappointed throughout most of the book - it read like sappy "news" reporting in the US, all about what wonderful people the kidnap victims were, along with all their successful children & marvellous friends, etc. I had lived in Colombia for a couple of years just before the events in this book took place & was at least somewhat acquainted with some of the people & situations involved, and I am not that enthusiastic about them. The priveledged, educated, neo-liberal class in Colombia doesn't get an awful lot of sympathy from me - I was mostly surprised that GGM was so supportive of them - but then I realized that that is where he comes from. By the end of the book, I had to admit it was very intriguing & I'm glad I read it, but I think it's spoiled GGM for me, too. This book will probably change the way I see his fiction works.

Well documented, well translated
This is my first attempt at GGM's work.The author's writing style is very different in accounting the events happened during that kidnap saga.As he explains the events unfolding, he carefully adds the background information of the appropriate character(s) involved in the scene and he gets back to the present by providing the correct dose of the past.Though the reader aware of the victims killed, the heart races every time the government forces goof up and we wonder whom going to get killed.That means successful writing.The book details the exhaustive account of how all the sides acted during the period of kidnapping, how professionally and emotionally the victims' families handle the situations.The author explains them in a measured quantity rather than tiring the reader with too many deatils.

The translation is great and I can't help feeling that Edith Grossman got into GGM's mind and translate it exactly what he was trying to put it.Very rare I come across a translator like that.

Worth reading.

Bookstore owners:read before you clasify !!!!!!
When you walk into a bookstore and go to the history section, and look for latinamerican history, you will find this book there.It is absolutely outrageous that this book is sold as if it were titled "A History of Colombia".

Kidnapping is a phenomena that has plagued Colombia for some time now, as it provides the economic means for the civil war in Colombia. However, kidnapping is not the axis our major point of our history.

This very well written book is an account of a kidnapping from the inside.Gabo actually spoke to the people this happened to, and penned it nicely.This book is sad and reflects a reality which should only exist in nightmares.

Worth it.

García Márquez as a journalist
"News of a Kidnapping" reveals García Márquez first passion: journalism. Though it's a novel, it's inspired on a series of real events that happened on Colombia several years ago. There's no evident criticism, but it reveals and illustrates the political situation of Colombia at that time (though it is still happening at the present). If you read this book, you're going to suffer both the hostages situations as their families' (as if you were either one).
But besides the dramatical situations, what is extremely interesting is the way the events are narrated. The odd chapters narrate the kidnapped people situations, their suffering. The even chapters narrate their families situations.
Though García Márquez always tend to jump back and forward into time in the same page, here the plot is more lineal and, as i said before, more journalistic.
Evidently, the kidnapping is one of the most awful crimes a human-being and his family can suffer, and by reading this, you will find out why. ... Read more

Book Description
Vivir para contarla is the extraordinary story of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s early life. It is a recreation of his formative years, from his birth in Colombia in 1927, through his evocative childhood to the time he became a journalist. The Nobel laureate offers us the memory of his childhood and adolescence, the years that shaped his creative imagination, and, with time, would become the basis of the fiction that makes up much of twentieth-century literature in Spanish and indeed the world.

In these pages Garcia Marquez reveals the echoes of peoples and stories that we meet in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, No One Writes to the Colonel, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Vivir para contarla is a guide to readers of his entire work, an indispensable companion to many unforgettable passages which, with the reading of this memoir acquire a new perspective.

The description from the book:

Vivir para contarla es, probablemente, el libro más esperado de la década, compendio y recreación de un tiempo crucial en la vida de Gabriel García Márquez. En este apasionante relato, el premio Nobel colombiano ofrece la memoria de sus años de infancia y juventud, aquellos en los que se fundaría el imaginario que, con el tiempo, daría lugar a algunos de los relatos y novelas fundamentales en la literatura en lengua española del siglo XX.

Estamos ante la novela de una vida a través de cuyas páginas García Márquez va descubriendo ecos de personajes e historias que han poblado obras como Cien años de soledad, El amor en los tiempos del cólera, El coronel no tiene quien le escriba o Crónica de una muerte anunciada y convierten Vivir para contarla en una guía de lectura para toda su obra, en acompañante imprescindible para iluminar pasajes inolvidables que, tras la lectura de estas memorias, adquieren una nueva perspectiva. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (33)

It Stands Unique by Itself!!!
Although I can consider myself a GGM fiction fan, I encountered "Vivir Para Contarla" utterly more attention-grabbing than any of his other works.Perhaps It was just the fact that he related his real life, from the time before his birth until he was something like twenty eight years old, in such a magical way that I could just not put the book down for more than a few moments. I could come across in this volume with so much of the background that made the genius in Gabo, that I could not accept it as factual. Actually I was so beguiled by the story, by the idiosyncrasy of his large and astonishing family, by the actual brilliance and intelligence of the child, the adolescent and the young man in Gabo, that I unreservedly supposed I was immersed in one more of this author's accomplishments. He relates his non precedent childhood and early adolescent years as a conspicuous reader and writer of poems and stories- which he memorized and recited by hearth-, as a distinguished picture drawer, as a notable singer, as an extremely timid person, in sum: as another character out of its novellas and short stories.He, at the same time, enriches our reading with his detailed and exhaustive career as an anonymous young journalist in Colombia, who spends an awesome amount of his free time discussing literature with his fellow workers and friends, at a time period when literature was the coolest matter to be involved in.However, the social and political backgrounds of his whereabouts are so precise and stuck to Colombian and the World's historic and social events, that henceforth what he conveys us in this first volume of his autobiography must have a great deal of reality in it.
In spite of the fact that a myriad of the characters, locations and events that we find as basis for his novellas and short stories come out of his real life, I do not believe it imperative to be acquainted to any of his other masterpieces in order to devour and absolutely enjoy this volume. It stands unique by itself!
I am anxiously waiting for the subsequent volumes of this trilogy, however due to the actual author's sickness; I don't believe we will be receiving the complete trilogy at all.

Muy mala encuadernación por Knopf
El libro es buenísimo, particularmente el estilo de Gabo es genial y lo que lo hace aun mas meritorio es que se trata de un relato autobiográfico. Lamentablemente tengo que advertirles de un error de encuadernación en la edición de pasta dura (hardcover) las hojas vienen mal cortadas, he ya ordenado dos libros y los dos vienen con el mismo defecto. La editorial KNOPF ha hecho un muy mal trabajo. Mi recomendación... busquen otras editoriales.

Vivir para Contarla
El autor es un relator latinoamericano costumbrista. El realismo magico es lo comun y corriente en esos pagos. De ilusion tambien se vive. Quiza algun dia se inspire en escribir una novela sobre el realismo magico de la tragedia cubana, dada su intima afinidad con el Doctor Fidel Castro Ruz.

Una magnífica crónica de los años que modelaron la imaginación de Garcia Marquez
"Living to Tell the Tale," ("Vivir Para Contarla"), is the first book in a planned trilogy that will make up the memoirs of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the renown Colombian writer who initially won public acclaim in the mid-1960s for his novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude." At that time, Garcia Marquez, a journalist and writer, had never sold more than 700 copies of a book. While driving his family through Mexico, he had a veritable brainstorm. He remembered his grandmother's storytelling technique - to recall fantastic, improbable events as if they had actually happened - literally. That was the key to recounting the life of the imaginary village of Macondo and her inhabitants. He turned the car around and drove back home to begin "One Hundred Years of Solitude" anew. To my mind it is one of the 20th century's best works of fiction, and was highlighted in the citation awarding Garcia Marquez the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.

"Living to Tell The Tale" relates the early years of the author's life, although some of the book's most important incidents predate Garcia Marquez's birth. The impact of these experiences, the people and their stories, were to have a powerful effect on him, as a man and as a writer. This is the tale of his parents' courtship, marriage and the birth of their children, Garcia Marquez, (Gabito), the oldest, and his ten siblings. It tells of his early years which were spent in Aracataca, in the home of his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, Colonel Nicolás Ricardo Márquez Mejía, was a Liberal veteran of the War of a Thousand Days. He was supposedly a storyteller of great repute. The Colonel told his young grandson that there was no greater burden than to have killed a man. Later García Márquez would put these words into the mouths of his characters. His grandmother, Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes, had a major influence on Gabriel's life also. Another great source of stories, her mind was filled with superstitions and folklore, and she gossiped away with her numerous sisters within hearing range of young "Gabito." No matter how fantastic her statements, she always delivered them as if they were the absolute, verifiable truth. This was the style which was to effect Garcia Marquez's fiction, sometimes called "magical realism." These women filled the house with stories of ghosts, premonitions and omens - all of which were studiously ignored by her husband. He had little interest in "women's beliefs."

Aracataca was a small village, a banana town on the Caribbean coast, where poverty was the norm and violence was an everyday occurrence. On December 6, 1928, in the Cienaga train station, near Aracataca, 3,000 striking banana workers were shot and killed by troops from Antioquia. Although still a baby, this event, recounted to him, was to have a profound effect on the author. The incident was officially forgotten and omitted from Colombian history textbooks.

In 1940, when he was twelve, Gabo was awarded a scholarship to a secondary school for gifted students, run by Jesuits. The school, the Liceo Nacional, was in Zipaquirá, a city 30 miles to the north of Bogotá. It was during his school years, 1940s and 50s, that he was first drawn to poetry - a national obsession in Colombia. Verse was revered as an art form, and also as an effective means of social and political commentary. He and his friends, fellow students, would read aloud and discuss poetry late into the night. The youths admired a group of poets called the piedra y cielo ("stone and sky") and they were strongly influenced by Juan Ramon Jimenez and Pablo Neruda. Too poor to buy his own books, Gabo would devour novels borrowed from friends.

While still a boy, he decided he wanted to be a writer. The people who surrounded him in his childhood later became instrumental when developing the characters and the storylines for his novels. "Love In The Time of Cholera" was inspired by the romance between his mother and father. And his grandfather, who had twelve children, (some say 16), by two different women, became Colonel Aureliano Buendia in "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

One of the most powerful episodes of the book tells of the period called "La Violencia." In 1948 the Liberal presidential candidate, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, was assassinated. The murder led to rioting, and left approximately 2500 dead on the streets of Bogota, during "el Bogotázo." Political violence and repression followed. One of the buildings that burned was the pension where Garcia Marquez lived, and his manuscripts were destroyed along with his living quarters. The National University was closed and he was forced to go to the university in Cartagena. Garcia Marquez began his career as a journalist, writing stories and commentary for a Liberal newspaper in Cartegana. Later he moved to the coastal city of Barranquilla where he began to associate with a group of young writers who admired modernists like Joyce, Woolf and Hemingway, and introduced Marquez to Faulkner. In 1954 he returned to Bogota, as a reporter for El Espectador.

Garcia Marquez begins his book, however, not with his real birth in 1928, but with his "birth as a writer," at age 22. He and his mother took a trip from Baranquilla, where he was working as a reporter, to his childhood home in Aracataca, now virtually a ghost town. They were going to sell the ancestral house. Vivid memories were stirred up here, memories which electrified his imagination. This trip was to change the course of his writing life. "With the first step I took onto the burning sands of the town, Aracataca instantly became Macondo, an earthly paradise of desolation and nostalgia." His one great subject became his family, "which was never the protagonist of anything, but only a witness to and victim of everything." His is not a chronological autobiography. Garcia Marquez cuts back and forth through time to show how memory colors experience. As he says in the book's epigraph, "Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it."

Humor, dry wit, a sense of the absurd, is a trademark throughout the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and this autobiography is full of his deadpan humor. His anecdotes of his many mistresses and cafe society are wonderful. "Living To Tell The Tale" is not a conventional literary memoir. It is a magical combination of memoir and national history written in the author's remarkable voice. It is his personal mythology, from the repertoire which birthed Macondo. The narrative is intimate and sincere, filled with bewitching details and descriptions. In spite of poverty, and the political turmoil so prevalent in Colombia during his lifetime, Gabo acknowledges his early years were filled with joy, a sense of well-being and encouragement from many people. Garcia Marquez leaves us, at the end of this volume, with a glimpse of his future love, his wife, ""wearing a green dress with golden lace in that year's style, her hair cut like swallows' wings, and with the intense stillness of someone waiting for a person who will not arrive."

Bravo Gabriel Garcia Marquez!!
JANA

I prefer his fiction
This book is the first in a series.Frankly, I hope that in his next memoir there iwll be more about his literary writing b/c this doesn't cover his marvelous literary career at all.

The first sections of the book which deal with his childhood and schooling are comic and moving, with great turns of phrase and details about his grandfather and large family.What I found less interesting were the accounts of his journalism career.Apart from a very compelling section about a political asassination and its aftermath, I was a little bored. Even worse, I did not feel that some of his bohemian friends were distinguished from each other.

I am going to go back and reread The General in His Labyrinth and the novels that I so adore.I just prefer them. ... Read more