Gabriel Marquez was an unknown writer for me in the year 1991. One of my friends casually mentioned that I should read this book and gave me One Hundred years of Solitude. I remember having read it in less than 72 hours and when my friend asked me about it, I had no words to say. I was awe-struck and spellbound. The novel made me look for more Marquez novels and I continued to read Love in the time of Cholera, The Autumn of the Patriarch, No one writes to the Colonel, Chronicle of a death foretold, The General in his Labyrinth and the superb autobiography Living to tell the tale.Ever since, Marquez has been a favorite author.
One hundred years of solitude is a story of the seven generations of Buendias in an imaginative town called Macando. It starts with the father taking his children to see ice for the first time and ends with the Buendias home and clan being destroyed in a storm of incestuous love. The novel popularized what is called ‘magical realism ‘ in literary terminology. The rich tapestry of the ‘Latin American “ in the novel is weaved through the family history of the Buendias through different characters and Marqeuz’s “barbarous” vision creates a living reality out of Macando. The ephemerality as well as the immutability of time is a major theme in the novel. Love and the want of love: the profligacy, the rigidity and the celibacy of love is another major theme. The running back and forth and the deliberate mixing up of events in the novel is a narrative expression which defines both the plot and the story.
Writing for the National Observer, William Kennedy called it “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.” Do we require any more explanation as to why the novel should be read?