This is the story of the Buendia family who settled and founded the mythical city of Macondo. It follows the lives and loves of the men and women who made up the family. Some of the men were inventors and magicians, some were warriors, all had lovers and sometimes their love was sustaining and sometimes their downfall. The exact location of Macondo is never specified so it becomes the archtype for South American culture. It is a blend of love, lore, politics, mystery, decades-long feuds and resentments and history that continually circles around again. The novel follows the birth, life and eventual death of the city and those within it.
Although Marquez did not invent magic realism, this novel soon became known as the masterpiece of this technique. This technique is known for weaving magical or supernatural elements into a story as if they were just commonplace occurrences. In this novel, some examples include the entire town having insomnia for an extended time, a four-year rain of yellow flowers, the extreme old age of the founding characters, a female character ascending to heaven while folding clothes, the wizard's workshop and many other things.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a Colombian author whose work brought Latin American literature to the world's notice. It won awards as the best foreign book in both Italy and France and was a founding brick in the body of work that brought Marquez the Nobel Prize in Literature. The book was written in 1967 and released in the United States in 1970. I read it first in 1971, a college freshman. It was probably the most significant book I read during those years of college and my first experience of magic realism as a literary technique. As I downsize my library, I read it again and was delighted to find that I loved it as much now as all those years ago. Some readers may find the similar names confusing as new babies are named after ancestors and it is easy to confuse characters at times. This book is recommended for literary fiction and multicultural readers.
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