Why it’s great — One Hundred Years of Solitude
“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.”
reads the famous first sentence of Gabriel García Márquez’s masterwork, One Hundred Years of Solitude. The novel narrates the fortunes and misfortunes of the Buendía family over seven generations in the fictional town of Macondo which was established by the family patriarch José Arcadio Buendía in Colombia ending with the Buendia home and clan being destroyed in a storm of incestuous love.
This novel is by no means an easy read. Latin American literature is unique in its style and pace. The novel is filled with lush sentences, complex characters and follows a non-linear narrative. There is no central protagonist to the story, as the years pass the characters grow old and die only to reappear as ghosts or reincarnations.
The characters appear to be trapped in a downward spiral powerless to escape as they all seem to be trapped by history. A history they do not know and therefore is condemned to repeat. A frustrating experience mirroring reality.
‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ follows a style of literature called magical realism. In this form of the genre, supernatural events and abilities are described in a matter of fact tone whereas real events are portrayed to be full of fantastical absurdity. The absurdity creeps on you slowly and gradually the borders between magic and reality are blurred.
The books contain compelling romances, bloody civil war, political intrigue and more than 20 characters named Aureliano.
The book provides a deep insight into the solitude of every character. Making it so real one can feel it. Everyone seems so lonely in a big family leaving the reader wondering, how can that even be possible?.
The book doesn’t evoke any strong emotion in the reader, rather it leaves them numb.
Apart from this, the book throws light on revolutions, plagues, myths, banana companies and the culture of Latin America. By reading through it, one can get a feeling of what life in Latin America has been like the past centuries
