One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Classics Book Club Selections, #3) (Perennial Classics) (P.S.)

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gregory Rabassa (Translator)

ONE OF THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS BOOKS AND WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE
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'Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice'

Gabriel García Márquez's great masterpiece is the story of seven generations of the Buendía family and of Macondo, the town they built. Though little more than a settlement surrounded by mountains, Macondo has its wars and disasters, even its wonders and its miracles. A microcosm of Columbian life, its secrets lie hidden, encoded in a book, and only Aureliano Buendía can fathom its mysteries and reveal its shrouded destiny.

Blending political reality with magic realism, fantasy and comic invention, One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the most daringly original works of the twentieth century.
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'Should be required reading for the entire human race' The New York Times

'The book that sort of saved my life' Emma Thompson

'No lover of fiction can fail to respond to the grace of Márquez's writing' Sunday Telegraph

• ISBN10: 0241968585
• ISBN13: 9780241968581
• Publish Date: 6 March 2014 (first published 25 June 1970)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 14 January 2024
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 432
• Language: English

Reviews

[ibeforem]

I’m really not sure what to say about this book. In truth, I didn’t finish it, but, I did make it about 75% of the way through. I just got tired of it. It’s an interesting and original story, but horribly confusing at times. Most of the men are named after each other, so I was constantly trying to figure out which person was being spoken about, and how old they were. I didn’t even mind the mystical elements, or the more unsavory ones (such as one of the men marrying a girl who was essentially a child of 10 or 11). It just got to be too much. I’m glad I gave it a shot, but I’m not sorry I didn’t finish.

[jamiereadthis]

It’s been nearly a year now, but it was like this: my magical little bookstore man, both of us in the middle of the shelves, breaking off conversation now and then to tug at the spines of old friends.

He tapped there, Love in the Time of Cholera, and I smiled, nodding. He then tugged at its next door neighbor, this book, laying his hand to the cover. “I have always meant to read this too,” he said, and when I said the same— had never read it, always meant to— he looked up grinning. “You know, my dear, I do believe we are leading parallel lives.” He chuckled, then— shelved it again, fondly.

“It’s waiting for me,” he said, a sigh. He looked to me to make sure I understood: I did, exactly. “We’re patient, it will come. In the meantime, it’s nice to know it’s waiting, isn’t it— for both of us.”

And now, all I want to do is search every bookshop high and low until I shake him out again, press a worn copy in his hands and tell him to read, read, please don’t wait another minute. This is the book written for him most of all.