Product 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 (30)

TIRED
This book, reviewing the last days of a great man, is very sad and drawn out.It has the nightmarish, dreamy, other worldly qualities found in the author's writing but the book dragged.Events were slow in unwinding with no climax.Maybe that is the way life ends for a man who has lost greatness and succombs to illness.

Great (but necessarily depressing) literature!
I first read this book back in 1992, when I was attending a school populated largely with mid-level military officers from the US and Latin America.I thought it would an appropriate and entertaining way to learn more about General Simón Bolívar, one of Latin America's most famous heroes.Before starting the book, I did not know whether this would be another challenging voyage of discovery--trying to unravel Gabriel García Márquez' oft used (and often difficult to penetrate) literary style of magical realism.Although he spent two years researching the last seven years of Bolívar's life to provide the historical background, the novel includes both fact and fiction; and it's not always possible or perhaps even necessary to tell the difference.

Born from a desire to complete a work started by a writer friend, and continued largely for his love of the Magdalena River, Garcia Marquez' the General and his Labyrinth ended up being a surprising and difficult read for me.

It was surprising because I was unfamiliar with this final phase of the Bolívar's life.Like most Americans, I was only vaguely aware of his role in various SA countries' struggles for independence from Spain.Set in 1830--the year of his death--the novel covers the last months of the general's attempt to flee his country for eventual exile in Europe.It was shocking to learn the extent to which this man's life had deteriorated from the time he was lauded as one of the world's great military heroes.In this final phase of his life, Bolivar is no longer a near-universal idol of the masses; but rather a tragic and broken-down man on the run, under threat of oblivion, sickness, insanity, betrayal, or assassination.

The book was difficult for two reasons.First, because the novel deals with South American historical personalities, events and battles with which I was vaguely, if at all, familiar.At the outset, I found myself wanting to stop to do further research on many of the referenced historical details.Although the Alfred A Knopf version of the book includes a helpful chronology for this purpose, I quickly tired of flipping back and forth to and from that helpful outline of the historical highpoints of the general's life.Eventually, I stopped trying.Frankly, I would imagine that even a fairly well-educated Colombian would have trouble keeping up with all the details García Márquez bandies about.

"The General in His Labyrinth" is also difficult because it is so relentlessly depressing.One is constantly reminded of what once was and how far things had deteriorated for the general.Perhaps this is the labyrinth that García Márquez uses in the title and which SB is trying to escape.Bolívar fails in the end, and instead of finding a pathway from his beloved Gran Colombia to exile in Europe; he finds only the end all human beings find in our own labyrinth: death.

I would recommend this book only for die-hard García Márquez fans or for readers well-versed in this period of Latin American history.

John Cathcart
Author, Delta 7

A Masterful Labyrinth
My theory is that Marquez literally attempted to make this book like a labyrinth to the reader.Chronologically the book goes all over the place, it does not follow a straight line, but rather it zig zags all over the place.As previous reviewers have mentioned, at times you feel like you've read what you've already read before.This is just like a labyrinth, you are there trying to find your way out, you run into a wall, you have to back out and retrace your steps, then proceed to figure out how to get out.

So Marquez possibly tried to create a new style with this work, the labyrinth novel.True literature written by a genius.Notice how he doesn't even number his chapters.After awhile of reading, you can't just pick up and say, "I'm in chapter five".You don't know what chapter you are in, they aren't numbered.In the novel you have no idea which way Marquez is going to turn.Forward, back, straight, sideways.No wonder so many people have had difficulty with this book, and some have not even finished.Marquez's labyrinth of a novel defeated them.I personally enjoy this novel, because it so different from his other works, and it's fascinating to read about Simon Bolivar and how he died such a lonely death after freeing South America of Spain's centuries' old grip.What a tragedy.Bolivar dies at the end, there is no way out of the labyrinth.

If you approach the novel with this perspective, it might make for a more enjoyable read.I give it 5 stars because Marquez is a master, there are abundant life lessons in this book (you just have to keep an eye out for them), it makes you think and wonder about life and the human condition and just how ungrateful some people can be to true heroes.

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.
... Read more

Product Description

One of the most influential literary works of our time, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a dazzling and original achievement by the masterful Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Customer Reviews (18)

Keep trying to read this if at first you put it down
My first couple of tries at reading this book didn't go very far. I never made it beyond the first chapter. Then on a visit to Colombia I was determined to read this book. I kept at it. Before long I was totally absorbed into the story, which is truly fascinating and amazing. Now I don't know why I could not get into it on my earlier attempts. I'm so glad that I persisted. So, the book that I originally couldn't get into, finally became one of my favorite novels.

Dizzyingly fantastic journey
"One Hundred Years of Solitude" is not for everyone.It is one of the most fantastical books ever written.In style it is somewhere between "Still Life with Woodpecker", "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test", and "The Satanic Verses", but perhaps with even weirder events occurring.It is a book you will want to take your time with, re-reading a lot as you go so that you soak up the style; and going back to previous passages to review how the characters are changing as time passes.

Marquez is Marvelous
One Hundred Years of Solitude is marvelous--extraordinary in its emotional depth. Marquez's breadth of understanding of human situations and human motivations is seldom seen in books. Some people can't see the difference in quality between a Rembrandt and a Coca Cola sign. Looking at some Amazon readers' negative comments suggests the same lack of appreciation. Marquez is right up there with the best.

Rich, Tiring, Worth It--Lyrical Beauty and Character
One of the most famous first lines of all time starts the book, "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." More profound, epistemologically, two sentences later, "The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point." Legendary for its magical realism, it surprised me sometimes, for its ability to combine wrenching emotions, intellectual cleverness and plays on language, as with, "Although they seemed to ignore what both of them knew and what each one knew that the other knew, from that night on they were yoked together in an inviolable complicity" (p. 146) Trouble was, this was all during the first eight months of caring for our baby Catherine. As the book put it, "they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over he acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings" (p. 230).
Although the last 30 pages were some of the best I can remember. More self-reflexive references: "It had never occured to him until then to think that literature was the best plaything that had ever been invetned to make fun of people" (p. 394). And finally, close to the end, melancholy and eternity, "It was the last that remained of a past whose annihilation had not taken place because it was still in a process of annihilation, consuming itself from within, ending at every moment but never ending its ending" (p. 409). I at once loved parts of this book, hated its dragging on when I needed shorter stimulation, and am grateful for having had those beautiful moments it captured so lyrically. I'd grade it an A-.

One Hundred Years of Solitude
I was very disappointed in the quality of this book.It was completely written on all over...virtually unreadable. Also, it took one month to arrive.I'm waiting to see how this book seller is with exchanges.I am not satisfied with the state of the book they sent me. ... Read more

Product Description
This one of the most important novels written by this authorwhich everyone must read. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Mother Of Stream of Consciousness Latin American Novels
Garcia-Marquez dictator combines within himself, the best and the worst,of the human being when invested with absolute power: from charity tocorruption, benevolence to rape, fear of God to extreme cruelty. The(sparse) punctuation follows an almost strict fitting of the Poissonstatistical distribution, page by page, and then amongst chapters,constituting this into both a textbook in literature and statistics.Tosome of us the most masterful novel of the Master Novelist of MeridianAmerica.

The Mother Of The Stream of Consciousness Latin American Nov
Garcia-Marquez' dictator combines within himself, the best and the worst,of the human being when invested with absolute power: from charity tocorruption, benevolence to rape, fear of God to extreme cruelty. The(sparse) punctuation follows an almost strict fitting of the Poissonstatistical distribution, page by page, and then amongst chapters,constituting this into both a textbook in literature and statistics.Tosome of us the most masterful novel of the Master Novelist of MeridianAmerica.

El realismo fantastico de Hispanoamerica
El otono del patriarca es una novela clave en dos aspectos: representa un desafio intelectual por su osada sintaxis y atrevida estructura gramatical, en el que el pasado y el presente se mezclan continuamente conforme avanza el relato, apenas separado por comas y ocasionales puntos seguidos. El segundo aspecto es la extraordinaria descripción que el autor realiza de los acontecimientos de la vida de una patria sin nombre gobernada desde los tiempos inmemoriales del vomito negro por un dictador anonimo, encarnacion de todos los generales mesianicos que ha padecido Latinoamerica, victima del culto a la personalidad.

El relato nos transporta en forma exquisita desde los albores de este imperio personal hasta la decadencia, en un ir y venir temporal, salpicado de relatos mitológicos, como el de Manuela Sanchez, una enigmatica belleza que surgio en el barrio de las peleas de perros, y quizas el unico ser de este mundo que burlo el poder omnipotente de este legendario gener! al. Una ultima sugerencia: lealo con un diccionario a mano. ... Read more

Product Description
Este libro excepcional reúne la novela corta que le otorga su título y otros seis relatos más, de los que todos menos uno pertenecen a la etapa de plena madurez del escritor. Fueron los años en los que Macondo le abrió las puertas del realismo mágico, donde la realidad se expresa mediante fórmulas mágicas y legendarias y los milagros se insertan en la vida cotidiana. La cándida Eréndira y su abuela desalmada personifican la inocencia y la maldad, el amor y su perversión, y el relato recuerda al mismo tiempo las gestas medievales y los cantos provenzales o trovadorescos, aunque, como siempre, inmersos en ese mundo denso y frutal del Caribe americano. Estas siete narraciones no son ejercicios para conservar un estilo, ni muchísimo menos, sino siete exploraciones en el mundo definitivo que el escritor había conquistado de una vez por todas. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Great for a rainy day!
This novel is very deppressing.But, it is a great read.You really get attached to Erendira and feel for her through what her grandmother does to her.I recommend it to anyone. It makes you feel thankful for the life you have.

Una maravillosa y surreal historia de fe y amor
Este es uno de los mejores libros q he leido.Felicitaciones Gabo! En este libro se cuenta la historia de la Candida Erendira- una muchacha muy bella a la q se la ha jugado el destino al ser la unica compañia de suabuela.Al cabo de el tiempo, la abuela empieza a usar a la muchacha paraobtener cosas para su beneficio.Pobre Erendira....como terminara estecuento? Como puede ella vivir esa vida? La respuesta esta en el espiritu dela muchacha, en las enormes ganas de vivir y la fe en un mejor futuro qnadie, ni su abuela podran arrancarle de su corazon.

Este libro fuehecho en pelicula hace ya unos años pero yo les recomiendo el libro. Leyendo el libro, pude ser parte del cuento cuando yo quisieray habiaveces en q no.Mucho de los detalles del libro son perdido en la pelicula.

muy buena.
dixon loves empathyk

muy buena.
dixon loves empathyk

An intriguing story full of symbolism and creativity.
Continuing with similar threads from his other works, Nobel Prize winning Garcia Marquez presents the story of a young girl obligated to prostitution by her heartless grandmother.Interprations could be taken down a numberof roads.A bit depressing at times, but grabs the senses.Keeps interestup.I enjoyed it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (33)

Power is a double-edged sword
Within the violent framework of a Colombian State with a government without credibility, an ineffective judicial system and the abysmal level of its security forces, G.G. Márquez brushed a poignant picture of the war on drug trafficking with in depth portraits of the kidnapped, the traffickers, their foot folk, the civil authorities and the judges involved.

Drug trading means easy money, which is more harmful than the narcotics themselves. It provokes a social breakdown. It becomes a waste of time learning to read and to write. One can live a better life as a criminal than as a law-abiding citizen. The law becomes one's greatest obstacle to happiness.
The drug traffickers were unable to distinguish between good and evil.
Their foot folk (the guards) knew that they were going to die young and cared only about living for the moment.
Many of the judges and the magistrates had the choice between being bribed or being killed. Their salaries were barely enough to live on, but not to pay for the education of their children.
The government (and its president) changed tactics in the drug war. Drug traffickers could be extradited to the US, where they faced harsh sentences (P. Escobar: `We prefer a grave in Colombia to a cell in the US.') Those who surrendered and confessed to their crimes could receive the right not to be extradited.
The kidnapped lived a disturbing nightmare swinging between hope (to be released) and fear (to be killed).

With the kidnappings the Extradites (mainly P. Escobar) tried to force the government to grant them an irrevocable right not to be extradited and to have the right to choose their prison.
But power is a double-edged sword; one wields it and one is wounded by it.

With its news dispatches balancing between alarmingly bad and slightly hopeful messages G. G. Márquez wrote a remarkably realist psycho-thriller on a shaken society.
A must read for all lovers of world literature.

Dark, Thrilling, Emotional And Well-Documented.
"News Of A Kidnapping" is a brilliant work of non-fiction by Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Marquez, known around the world for his novels including "One Hundred Years Of Solitude" and "Love In The Time Of Cholera." Here Marquez explores the sad recent history of his native land, where the drug trade in the 1980s and 1990s turned Colombia into a raging war zone similar to today's Mexico. Marquez uses the kidnapping of ten high-class Colombians by drug lord Pablo Escobar as his basic storyline, Escobar and his fellow drug lords want to use the hostages as a way to force the Colombian government to stop plans to extradite them to the United States. Marquez uses this setting to transport us into modern Colombian culture, society and history.

In breathtaking pace Marquez chronicles the kidnappings, the characters involved and how they survived the agony and terror of their ordeal. "News Of A Kidnapping" surpasses any fictional crime thriller with it's incredible attention to detail, the way Marquez makes history come to life and finds the drama in reality. The book is a potent mix of perfect journalism and engaging storytelling, never boring the reader yet presenting a vast gallery of facts, events, people and dates. The world Marquez takes us into reads like something out of the Brazilian film "City Of God," cartels rule the streets, a culture of death and corruption takes place while the rich form death squads and Marxist guerrillas roam the countryside. Anyone who wants to understand modern Colombia, or what is taking shape in Mexico, should read this book.

Like the best works by Eduardo Galeano and Salman Rushdie, Marquez succeeds here in finding the humanity of the real life story. It doesn't read like some academic chronicle. Like his other brilliant nonfiction book, "Clandestine In Chile," Marquez takes a real-life event and makes you realize why the term "the truth is stranger than fiction" exists. There are moments where the hostages recall hallucinatory experiences during their ordeal that read like magical realism itself, there are scenes of such violence, suspense and surprise that they make John Grisham look like Danielle Steele. Each hostage, each politician, each villain, is perfectly constructed, explored and analyzed. The only person who eludes us is Pablo Escobar, Marquez brilliantly casts him as a kind of dark shadow hovering over Colombia, the dark hand we can't see but know is back there planning the terror.

"News Of A Kidnapping" is great literature and great history, it works for a good read on the plane or train, yet it is also a valuable work of scholarship for students of modern Latin American history. One is tempted to prefer Marquez as a nonfiction writer to his iconic title of novelist. This is also the best book on the drug war that engulfed Colombian society for so long, Marquez doesn't just chronicle the crime, he analyzes his people's psychological state, the toll the culture and society took due to the violence. "News Of A Kidnapping" is a beautifully written work that has not aged and should be required reading for anyone interested in the master's body of material.

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. ... Read more

Product Description
An Approach to Gabriel García Márquez's Novels-Three-One Hundred Years of Solitude

Students' Academy

About Gabriel García Márquez 6
Childhood and Early Life 8
Career as a Journalist 13
Marriage and Family Life 16
First Novella-Leaf Storm 17
One Hundred Years of Solitude 18
Popularity 20
Autumn of the Patriarch 23
A Firm Decision 25
Chronicle of a Death Foretold 26
Love in the Time of Cholera 27
Physical Ailments 28
Recent Works 29
Film 30
Writing Style 33
Realism and Magical Realism 35
Thematic Analysis of His Works 37
Legacy 41
Nobel Prize 42
Works 43
Novels 43
Novellas 44
Short Story Collections 45
Non Fiction 46
About “One Hundred Years of Solitude” 47
Historical Context and “One Hundred Years of Solitude” 50
Summary in Brief 57
Characters 61
About Major Characters 75
Major Themes 80
Motifs 88
Symbols 91
Summary and Analysis 94
Chapter 1 to Chapter 4 94
Analysis 100
Chapter 5 to Chapter 9 109
Analysis 115
Chapter 10 to Chapter 13 123
Analysis 129
Chapter 14 to Chapter 17 137
Analysis 143
Chapters 18 to Chapter 20 149
Analysis 152





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Print ISBN: 978-0-557-71281-6 ... Read more

Product Description
An Approach to Gabriel García Márquez's Novels-Three-One Hundred Years of Solitude

Students' Academy

About Gabriel García Márquez 6
Childhood and Early Life 8
Career as a Journalist 13
Marriage and Family Life 16
First Novella-Leaf Storm 17
One Hundred Years of Solitude 18
Popularity 20
Autumn of the Patriarch 23
A Firm Decision 25
Chronicle of a Death Foretold 26
Love in the Time of Cholera 27
Physical Ailments 28
Recent Works 29
Film 30
Writing Style 33
Realism and Magical Realism 35
Thematic Analysis of His Works 37
Legacy 41
Nobel Prize 42
Works 43
Novels 43
Novellas 44
Short Story Collections 45
Non Fiction 46
About “One Hundred Years of Solitude” 47
Historical Context and “One Hundred Years of Solitude” 50
Summary in Brief 57
Characters 61
About Major Characters 75
Major Themes 80
Motifs 88
Symbols 91
Summary and Analysis 94
Chapter 1 to Chapter 4 94
Analysis 100
Chapter 5 to Chapter 9 109
Analysis 115
Chapter 10 to Chapter 13 123
Analysis 129
Chapter 14 to Chapter 17 137
Analysis 143
Chapters 18 to Chapter 20 149
Analysis 152





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Print ISBN: 978-0-557-71281-6 ... Read more

Product Description
El general Simón Bolívar, “El Libertador” de los países de América del Sur, da, por última vez, un nostálgico viaje por el río Magdalena en el que vuelve a visitar ciudades en sus orillas donde revive sus triumfos, sus pasiones y las traiciones de toda una vida. Poseedor de un gran encanto personal, prodigiosamente afortunado en amores, en la guerra y en la política, todavía baila con tanto entusiasmo y habilidad que los que lo ven no pueden creer lo enfermo que está. Apasionado por los recuerdos del poder que tuvo, y de su sueño de unidad continental que nunca logró realizar, Bolívar es un ejemplo conmovedor de cuánto puede ganarse —y perderse— en una vida. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

A Great Warrior's Last Battle
A fictionalized account of Simon Bolivar, based on his last voyage, illness and death. For one like myself who didn't know much about the <> of South America, it was enlightening, powerful and sad. The great man is portrayed in decline, but with flashes of his previousbrilliance and intuitive vision. The portrait is all too human--a man of tremendous ego, vanity, libido, and charisma. A man who turned away from his upbringing to become a revolutionary. A man who lost his wife after eight months of marriage and never again formed a committed relationship with a woman. A man idolized, loved, and hated by his countrymen. A man deeply disappointed that his vision of a unified South American nation never materialized.

Author Gabriel Garcia Marquez is of course a genius and writes this book with his usual flair. It is sometimes difficult to separate fact from fiction in the narrative, but then again, it doesn't matter. He conveys the spirit of a man and his times. It was hard to put the book down and I'm sure I'll come back to it again. I recommend this one highly.

Bolivar's stream of conciousness?
To appreciate this book at its true worth one does need to do some homework.Understanding a little bit of the political complexities that surrounded the end of the independence wars and the start of the nation building process would help to gain a perspective to allow a better appreciation of a narration that pretends to present us a sick, depressed Bolivar. Yet, even if you refuse to do that home work, it will be a very good read.We are not in 100 Years of Solitude anymore here.This book has an odd sense of reality since it focuses more to the inner workings of Bolivar's mind, and his way of facing the end.Perhaps what makes the book really interesting it to see the image that Bolivar has over the cultural elites of Northern South Ameica, his legacy that for better or for worse inspires great writer like Garcia Marquez, or opportunistic politicians like we can see today in Venezuela.Reading how Garcia Marquez imagines the end of the Bolivarian epic is more fascinating than the story itself.

garcia marquez parece cansado
este libro no me gusto en lo mas minimo, a diferencia de sus otros libros que he disfrutado, este libro pide un esfuerzo sobre humano para dejarse leer, y ademas es bastante dificil diferenciar la ficcion de los datoshistoricos a menos que uno sea un experto en historia sur americana.Algunosdatos referentes a las caracteristicas fisicas de Simon Bolivar, son datosmuy curiosos pero que requeririan confirmacion.A algunas personas lesagradara el libro, sobre todo creo que a los historiadores, pero para elpublico en general resulta muy aburrido

LUIS MENDEZluismendez@codetel.net.do

Una experiencia intrincada pero gratificante
El verbo y estilo de Garcia Marquez pruduce una obra colosal donde se refleja la etapa mas sombria de la vida del libertador descrita con maticesmuy liberales de imaginacion pero con fuertes fundamentos historicos. Parauna lectura mas liviana e igualmente placentera les recomiendo "ElCoronel no tiene quien le escriba"

!Una desmitificacion!
Si los relatos, dibujados con palabras que dan al lector un imagen tan claro del protagonista, dados a nosotros en el estilo caracteristico de Marquez sean verdaderos o no, esta obra es una de las mejores que he leido. El autor pinta un retrato del famoso general que provee una vista profundade lo que el sentia en sus ultimos dias; el general era humano. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Excelente
La Hojarasca, primera novela de García Márquez, muestra el inicio y fundación de lo que sería luego el pueblo de Macondo. Es una excelente obra para introducirse a la literatura de García Márquez. La novela es sencilla, pero de riqueza literaria. En la misma se presenta la historia de un muerto, el médico, desde la perspectiva de tres personas. El desarrollo de las diferentes perspectivas se dan en un mismo tiempo y espacio.

Ningun Novato
En La Hojarasca (la primera novela de don Gabo), se destaca su habilidad innata de escribir. Las primeras respiraciones de Macondo como protagonista, la originalidad de su tecnica narrativa y la elocuencia de su sintaxis, visibles en sus futuras obras, nacen de esta. Fue un placer (al fin) leer la novela que es la cuna de "Cronica", "Cien Anios", "El Coronel", etc.
Ciertos aspectos a cultura de Latinoamerica (el resentimiento, la aceptacion de lo socialmente correcto, etc) se conocen aqui por primera vez a traves de los ojos de Macondo de GGM.

Estupendo
Este libro expresa la preocupacion de Marquez: la soledad.La novela es contada por tres personajes - Isabel, su papa, y su hijo. El autor hace esto para darnos tres punto de vista de tres personajes de diferenteedades- un niño,una adulta, y un señor mayor, de lo que esta pasando.

Paralela a Cien Años
La Hojarasca es una historia que corre a la par con Cien Años de Soledad, se situa tambien en el mágico Macondo aunque la familia Buendia no es la protagonista: es el pueblo en si. La hojarasca es como el fin de el ordenestablecido en Macondo. El libro es corto y muy sencillo para leer, ademástiene un peculiar estilo: tres personas narran la historia, el niño, elCoronel e Isabel en tiempos paralelos. Es interesante y bien recomendado. ... Read more

Product Description
Written just before One Hundred Years of Solitude, this fascinating novel of a Colombian river town possessed by evil points to the author's later flowering and greatness. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

The sanctity of the ballot
`In Evil Hour' is G.G. Márquez's version of the French `film noir' `Le Corbeau' shot by Henri-Georges Clouzot, where a person terrorizes a village with lampoons out of sexual jealousy.
`In Evil Hour', however, centers on more important subjects: social justice and politics.
`The sanctity of the ballot' has been desecrated by a `ruler by the gun': `a fine business: my party gets in power, the police threaten my political opponents with death, and I buy their land and livestock at prices I set myself.'
The lampoons are `a symptom of social decomposition'. They are `a case of terrorism in the moral order', because `death is feeding on this town.'
A final confrontation puts the mayor-ruler and his thugs against the majority of the population. If no other solution is possible, `justice depends on bullets'.

With its brilliant images (`He felt like an ox with a ring in his nose, being led to the poolroom'), its magical creation of a menacing atmosphere, its mix of hidden alliances and innocent (until the masks fall) bystanders (the judge and the priest), Gabriel García Márquez wrote a formidable masterpiece.

A must read for all lovers of world literature.

Decent Read
After having read "Love in the Time of Cholera," this book was certainly a step down.Although there are a few interesting passages worthy of deeper thought and discussions, overall the book isn't as captivating as his more popular works.

The dawn of the dead
"In Evil Hour" is one of the early novels written by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Published in 1962, it was previous to his "A Hundred Years of Solitude" and "The Autumn of the Patriarch", some of his most famous novels and that consolidated his style. Considering that, one can say that this novel is really good. It is not as fine tuned as his best works, there is no Magical Realism in here -- actually, the book is quite realist -- but it is such an engaging and well conceived story that it is impossible to stop reading.

The narrative is set in a small town ruled by a peculiar mayor. He fills the role of both mayor and deputy -- in other words, he is the law in that place. The citizens having been facing a small problem. Every morning someone finds in his, her door a bulleting anonymously written telling a gossip about him, her or the family. The strange thing is that the fact stated in the piece of paper is known by everyone, despite people not talking about it. So what is making the citizens tense is not what will be said but who is saying those things.

Solving this mystery is a job to the nameless mayor, but he is not very interested in it. To his knowledge this kind of gossip will stop sooner or later. He has a very interesting role in the book, since he is such a dubious character. As the reading progress, one can notice that he can't be simply described as good or evil. It is much more complex than that. So are townspeople. Márquez make them appealing folks with very interesting background stories to keep the pages moving.

"In Evil Hour" deals with politics, but in a very subtle way. Hints are given here and there about the recent changes the town has faced. The past seems to have been obscure, but we are never certain of that. Márques exploit heavy subjects that darken Latin American History with grace and seriousness and his peculiar sense of humor. And in the end we seem to have spent some time in that village, and however much we may have enjoyed it, we may not be willing to come back to that place -- although one may want to reread this book one of these days.

Off-stage action
"In Evil Hour" is a swift portrait of a Colombian town that connects the awful force of oppressive regimes to the bald paranoia of a town feeding itself rumor after rumor about its own citizens.The themes are there, but might seem obtuse upon your first reading.Still, the book pretty clearly says that tyranny leads to an abandonment of sense and a mean discontent, a desire to assert yourself by shaming the powerful when you have no democratic outlet for expression.This is a novel of the quietly disenfranchised and supposedly pious succumbing to the base desires of an evil hour.

The salilent point in grasping it all comes when you realize a lot of essential action is implied.Marquez has called Faulkner his "master" and here, while Marquez is still developing his own voice, he borrows heavily on Faulkner's style of orcing the reader to infer basic plot action.For example, Trinidad is arguably a lampooner.She's the one who first mentions them and she mysteriously falls sick when the curfew is set.Note thhe relationship betwen joyfully killing mice and her taking glee in the misfortunate of the lampoons. She's abused and belongs to a clergy robbed of real holiness and indepedence from the state; it's no small wonder she's vicious ... or that her replacement, Marquez implies, has placed more lampoons as the story concludes.

Another chief feature of Evil Hour is that it has no moral protaganist.The mayor is a government bully: his character is a wry, generous picture of a bored, opportunistic tyrannical hoodlum -- and the judge?The judge is lazy and corrupt beyond measure.

The priest is the most sympathetic main figure because he is devout and fatalistic at once.He lives his days in a sullen guilt at placing his church at the mercy of the state and offering people a brittle faith in the face of brutal dictatorship.

It's worth noting, biographically, that Marquez's bittersweet attitude toward tyranny comes from a correspondence and relationship with Castro.

Underrated, b/c people just don't understand it.
In Evil Hour hasn't enjoyed the respect it should, as a contemporary masterpiece, at least on par with Love in the Time of Cholera.

Readers who cite a lack of plot have not fully explored this book. The reality of this novel is that all of the messages, most of the plot, and a good part of the action are implied, rather than explicitly stated. If one were available, I would recommend picking up a Cliff's Notes or Sparknotes for this book, due to the confusing structure and dense, recondite prose; none of the editions I have read so far has included an introduction or explanation of the book more thorough than what is written on the dust jacket.

Ultimately, If you're looking for some good, light, poolside reading, skip In Evil Hour - this is not that sort of book, and you will be left confused and unsatisfied with the book. However, if you are prepared to read it twice, carefully, in order to understand the subtexts and allusions, this book will enchant you and become a favorite. ... Read more

Product Description
Can you imagine a shipwrecked sailor living on air and seaweed for eight days? Can you imagine a trail of yellow butterflies fluttering their wings to songs of love? Once, there was a little boy named Gabito who could. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is perhaps one of the most brilliant writers of our time. He is a tremendous figure, enomously talented, and unabashedly admired. This is his story, lovingly told, for children to enjoy. Using the imagery from his novels, Monica Brown traces the novelist's life in this creative nonfiction picture book from his childhood in Colombia to today. This is an inspring story about an inspring life, full of imagination and beauty. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Delightful.
I love all of Monica Brown's children's book.This is wonderful to not only help me keep up my spanish but also fun for the kids to listen to.Well worth the read.

Great book from a great series
My wife and I are professors of Latin American literature, and we love this and the other bilingual children's books by Monica Brown.They offer compelling and accurate depictions of prominent Latin American figures from authors (García Márquez, Gabriela Mistral), to musicians (Celia Cruz), to athletes (Pelé). This particular title is perfect for young readers.I can't think of a better way to encourage our children to take an interest in reading the works of one of the greatest authors of our time when they are old enough to do so.The pictures are fabulous, and the capture beautifully the world that García Márquez delivers in his novels and stories.The text in Spanish is a faithful and accurate translation of the English version, which is, unfortunately, not always the case with "bilingual" books.

Great Twice
I bought this and a few other Luna Rising books for my students in Spanish one and two. The fact that they are bilingual makes them less intimidating. The illustrations are wonderful and they get a sort of mini biography of someone important in Latin American literature. I use this and other picture books to facilitate reading and language comprehension while at the same breaking away from the text book.

For native speakers it is not particularly difficult, as it is a children's book, but for non native learners the language used is a bit challenging at times. Which is where the bilingual part comes in really handy. It also helps for the intermediate learners, when illustrating that translation is not always 100 % word for word.Overall this book is great just to read in English or Spanish and as a teaching tool if you are up to the challenge.

Magical storytellers childhood
A magnificent children's book about an incredible talent, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, that students, children, parents and teachers alike will enjoy. The book serves as a nice introduction to this giant of literature. The Nobel Prize winner for Literature, who wrote over thirty books, with such diverse themes and titles as El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Oprah #59), News of a Kidnapping (Vintage International) and One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.) has had his books translated into many languages and several made into motion pictures. Before he was well known though he was known as Gabito.This divine children's biography tells of the magical world of Gabito in Colombia where he lived with a 100 year old parrot,who told stories in a haunted house. Gabito also loved to be with his grandfather who introduced him to his love of words. Gabito would imagine a world beyond his, incorporating his childhood experiences into storiesfor everyone to enjoy. His fantastic imagination began in childhood and this fact should appeal to the young reader. The bilingual text is superb and may serve the student well whose first language is not English. the illustrations are magnificent, especialy the oversized drawings that incorporates two pageswith the theme of theimagination. This Luna Rising book is another example of a outstanding bilingual children's book. Author Monica Brown again delivers a beautiful bilingual educational book. If you enjoy this book you may also like some of her other biographies for children like My Name is Gabriela/Me llamo Gabriela (Bilingual): The Life of Gabriela Mistral/la vida de Gabriela Mistral or her award winning book My Name is Celia/Me llamo Celia (Bilingual): The Life of Celia Cruz/la vida de Celia Cruz (Americas Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature. Winner (Awards)).This bilingual children's book is highly recommended for K-6 and community libraries.

Wonderful books for a bilingual child!
Monica Brown is an amazingly smart and sensitive writer for children.I heard her speak at a conference, and she puts a lot of care and thought into her books, which are bilingual.She hopes to introduce children to interesting Latino/a people, and I have bought several of these books for my soon-to-be bilingual grandchild.Highly recommended! ... Read more

Product Description
In part the story of its own writing, thisquasi-autobiographical, postmodern novel weaves a tale of jealousy, sex, dope andalcoholism around the theme of the narrator’s so-far frustrated literaryambitions.

The integral and inalienable setting is the urbanMexico of the mid-1980s, with the Cold War still the international political backdrop toeveryday life. Wending his way through angst-ridden erotic entanglements and a sessionwith his Freudian analyst (an anti-Lacanian, we learn), the narrator, who goes by theauthor’s real name, finally arrives at his dream encounter — and‘dream’ may well be doubly apt, because the episode’srelation to everyday reality is left undefined — with famed Latin-Americanauthor and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, Gabriel GarcíaMárquez. Perhaps the laureate will write a preface to his latest novel.

“It’s about a guy stuck in traffic; he wantsto be a writer, to be famous, and Mike, one of the characters, tells him he should writethe A Hundred Years of Solitude of the eighties. The guy feels happy at first but thenin the middle of the traffic and the smog he realizes that there aren’t anyAmarantas and Aurelianos Buendías there, there aren’t anyJosé Arcadios, that all there are are drunks, gangs, poor people trampled bythe yuppies — that after all, the jungle is gone.” ... Read more

Product Description

One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning career.

With One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez introducedLatin American literature to a world-wide readership. Translated into morethan two dozen languages, his brilliant novel of love and loss in Macondostands at the apex of 20th-century literature. --Alix Wilber ... Read more

Customer Reviews (264)

A complete literacy masterpiece!
A complete literacy masterpiece! I had been meaning to read 100 years of solitude for over 7 years but never found the time to do so until now and the book did not disappoint! Gabriel Garcia Marquez painted a whole society with his beautiful breathtaking descriptions of the town Mocondo. I loved the characters from the Buendia family and other fond myself laughing and other times pausing to contemplate his points on life through the actions of some of the characters. There is a little of everything for everyone in this book! Highly recommended!

Enchanting and Unforgettable!
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Nobel-Prize winning One Hundred Years of Solitude is a brilliant, world-renowned novel that recounts the history of the Buendia family over a century's time. Often considered the masterpiece of his writing career, One Hundred Years takes place in the fantastical town of Macondo, which was founded by the Buendia family's patriarch, Jose Arcadio Buendia. The story begins from the first generation of Buendias, that of Jose Arcadio Buendia, and then concludes at the seventh and final generation. In this widely recognized work, (also the next best-selling Spanish novel after Miguel de Cervantes' classic, Don Quijote) Garcia Marquez weaves a tale of love and heartbreak, happiness and rancor, humor and mystery; while largely incorporating elements of his mastered magical realism in every chapter.
One Hundred Years of Solitude begins with the founding of Macondo, a small town in South America, by Jose Arcadio Buendia. He and his wife, Ursula, along with their family, leave their home in Riohacha, Colombia in the hopes of finding a better place to live. Upon arriving in the town that would soon be Macondo, the Buendia family sets up camp at a place in the woods and sleeps. That same night, Jose Arcadio Buendia dreams ofMacondo as "a noisy city with houses having mirror walls" (39). (In this excerpt, Garcia Marquez toys with the magical realism idea of mirrors that Jorge Luis Borges incorporated in many of his poems.)
After exploring, Jose Arcadio Buendia declares the land an "island" and from there, he seemingly invents a new world within Macondo, naming all sorts of things at his own whim; since "the world was so recent that many things lacked names" (42). After the official establishment of Macondo, it becomes a town often victimized by strange and supernatural events. (Some of these events are hard to understand if read or understood too literally--Mexican literary critic Luis Leal has said that "if you can explain it, then it isn't magical realism.") Garcia Marquez features ideas of magical realism, fused with other religious ideas, as well as unsettling but entertaining superstitions very much throughout the novel. To fully appreciate the Macondo that Garcia Marquez creates, you must let go of all pre-existing conventional, practical ideas regarding literature and fall into a new, fantastical version of "solitude." It is very much worth it!
One Hundred Years of Solitude, now translated into over 37 languages worldwide, is an important novel that any reader/writer should read. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has influenced many authors, mastering the genre of magical realism and putting Latin America on the literary map. One Hundred Years is entertainingly mystical, yet unsettlingly real--but above all, it is unforgettable.

One of the best books I've ever read!
If you're a fan of magical realism and Latin American literature, you MUST read this book!Garcia Marquez is an incredible writer...an absolute genius...and the translator did an amazing job.If you are not familiar with magical realism, it would be wise to read about it before reading this book so you can enjoy the book for what it is and not read it too literally.

One of my favorite books
I first read this book in college and found it to be so captivating. The story of Macondo feels very real. At the beginning we are introduced to the Buendia family and they seem really simple. It's not until the book progresses that we start to get confused with every family member having the same name. What is Marquez's point in this? I think to show that life is simple and to keep the family going in a circular motion. By the end of the book, everything seems to have gone full circle, from life to death, and inventions people make to eventually exploiting the earth. I love the slight magical realism in this book. It really adds so much quality as if to mock what we value so much on earth.

Yawn.
Characters aren't interesting. The story is not compelling. The plot is not engaging. No mystery of any kind. Just dull. Much ado ... why? ... Read more

Product Description
Discusses the life and career of the Colombian novelist who achieved fame in a genre known as magical realism and who won the 1982 Nobel Prize for literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An informed and informative biography of Gabriel Garcia Marques
In "Gabriel Garcia Marquez", Harold Bloom (Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University) provides readers with an informed and informative biography of Gabriel Garcia Marques, the South American writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature and whose most widely known novel for English readers is "One Hundred years of Solitude". "Gabriel Garcia Marquez" features a critical, scholarly, and thought-provoking essay and analysis, supplemented with details about the writer and his life. Also very highly recommended reading for inclusion into highschool, college, and community library Literary Studies collections are Professor Harold Blooms' "James Baldwin"; "Herman Melville" ; "William Blake"; "Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451"; "Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five"; "Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis"; and "Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie". ... Read more

Product Description

Master of magic realism, distinguished journalist and film critic, friend of world leaders ranging from Fidel Castro to Pres. Bill Clinton, Gabriel García Márquez improbably emerged from obscure beginnings to become an author more beloved of readers worldwide than any other living writer. His plots and protean characters plunge readers into the world of fable, yet their universal appeal, as this biography shows, is deeply rooted in the particularity of García Márquez's own idiosyncratic early life and his later wide travels, all undertaken with the restless curiosity and zest for life that he manages to evoke in his readers.

Product Description
An Approach to Gabriel García Márquez's Novels-One-

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Students' Academy

About Gabriel García Márquez 6
Childhood and Early Life 8
Career as a Journalist 13
Marriage and Family Life 16
First Novella-Leaf Storm 17
One Hundred Years of Solitude 18
Popularity 20
Autumn of the Patriarch 23
A Firm Decision 25
Chronicle of a Death Foretold 26
Love in the Time of Cholera 27
Physical Ailments 28
Recent Works 29
Film 30
Writing Style 33
Realism and Magical Realism 35
Thematic Analysis of His Works 37
Legacy 41
Nobel Prize 42
Works 43
Novels 43
Novellas 44
Short Story Collections 45
Non Fiction 46
About “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” 47
Analytical Overview 52
Summary in Brief 53
Characters 57
About Major Characters 63
Major Themes 67
Motifs 75
Symbols 77
Summary and Analysis 78
Chapter 1 78
Analysis 81
Chapter 2 84
Analysis 87
Chapter 3 90
Analysis 93
Chapter 4 95
Analysis 97
Chapter 5 100
Analysis 103
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Print ISBN: 978-0-557-70886-4 ... Read more