One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez is arguably the best Latin American novel ever written. As Melquiades excites Buendia's father with new inventions and tales of adventure, neither can know the significance of the indecipherable manuscript that the gypsy passes into their hands. The tribulations of the Buendia household push memories of the manuscript aside. Few remember its existence and one will discover the message that it holds.
'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.' Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly founded village where Jose Arcadio Buendia and his strong-willed wife, Ursula, have started their new life. As the mysterious Melquiades excites Aureliano Buendia's father with new inventions and tales of adventure, neither can know the significance of the indecipherable manuscript that the old gypsy passes into their hands. Through plagues of insomnia, civil war, hauntings and vendettas, the many tribulations of the Buendia household push memories of the manuscript aside. Few remember its existence and only one will discover the hidden message that it holds...This new edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most celebrated novel is published to coincide with celebrations to mark the 80th birthday of this Nobel Prize winning author in 2007.
No lover of fiction can fail to respond to the grace of Marquez's writing Sunday Telegraph It's the most magical book I have ever read... I think [Marquez] has influenced the world Caroline Herrera The book that sort of saved my life Emma Thompson It's so much fun to read, unexpected and beautiful Darryl Hannah The greatest novel in any language of the last 50 years Salman Rushdie Should be required reading for the entire human race New York Times
Author
About Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927- ) was born in Aracataca, Colombia. His most recent book, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, is his first new novel to be published in a decade and is available in paperback from Penguin from August 2007. He is the author of several novels and collections of short stories, including Leaf Storm (1955); One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967); The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975); Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981) and The General in His Labyrinth (1989). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
