Experimental feature: Order One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Book Club) from the UK, Canada, Germany or France by clicking an appropriate flag below.

               

Some items available at Amazon.com are not available in all countries.

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 863
EAN: 9780060740450
ISBN: 0060740450
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 464
Publication Date: 2004-01-20
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Product Release Date: 2004-01-20
Studio: Harper Perennial

"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."

It is typical of Gabriel García Márquez that it will be many pages before his narrative circles back to the ice, and many chapters before the hero of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Buendía, stands before the firing squad. In between, he recounts such wonders as an entire town struck with insomnia, a woman who ascends to heaven while hanging laundry, and a suicide that defies the laws of physics:

A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.
"Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.

The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick. Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's magical realism. Consider, for example, the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio Buendía has killed in a fight. So lonely is the man's shade that it haunts Buendía's house, searching anxiously for water with which to clean its wound. Buendía's wife, Úrsula, is so moved that "the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove she understood what he was looking for, and from then on she placed water jugs all about the house."

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

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Read it
Review:
This book was good, but at some times it was hard to follow. This novel was difficult to keep straight. It run the gauntlet from comedy to tragedy and love to death to war and everything in between witch made it very emotional. This book was also a kind of history textbook witch is ok if history is in your blood but it is not in mine. Irregardless it was emotionally satisfing. But it could have been improved if it could have been simplified. When you finish the book, don't be surprised to find yourself stepping out of a dream and back into the real world. Only in the mind of the master can a wounded arm turn into a field of butterfiles. If you like this book, you might want to try Marquez's new autobiography.

---

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A profound book, and one of the best I've read
Review: Absolutely loved it. Vivid and full of creativity, if anyone wants to read a good book I definetly recommend it. Actually not a hard book to read, but it should not be read in a hurry either.

---

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Reminds Me of America's Keenest City, by Mongo
Review: This is a marvelous book that remind's me in both style and message of America's Keenest City, by Mongo. I would recommend that if you like Marquez, you should read Mongo also. Both books use surrealism to expose political and cultural phenomena. Marquez enlightens us about Latin America and Mongo about North America.

---

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: U will never read anything like it
Review: I read One Hudred Years of SOlitude like 6 times over the years, and it still holds its magic and atmosphyre. Just an unbelievable classic. It feels weary and long at moments, also distracting at moments but its originality and magical ventures arise and fill the soul. Must have.

---

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: a great book but...
Review: a great book but it can be a little decieving. It will be different than anything you have ever read... and that can make it a little troubling... and tedious at times, however when you finish youl feel great about it and love it. so there ya go.

check it out.

---

---