Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1596 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-31
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Synopsis
An acknowledged masterpiece, this is the story of seven generations of the Buendia family and of Macondo, the town they have built. Though little more than a settlement surrounded by mountains, Macondo has its wars and disasters, even its wonders and miracles. A microcosm of Columbian life, its secrets lie hidden, encoded in a book and only Aureliano Buendia can fathom its mysteries and reveal its shrouded destiny. Blending political reality with magic realism, fantasy with comic invention, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is one of the most daringly original works of the twentieth century.

Customer Reviews

is the praise for this book excessive????
Rather strangely perhaps i have to say right now that i have yet to finish this book, I've been reading a lot over the last few months, one after the other and then started this and faultered. It is declared on the cover of my copy as 'the best novel in any language of the last fifty years'. How anyone has the belief in their own opinion to say that i have no idea. The whole book, so far, seems to be written like an introducation, where you don't get to meet the characters, you are just told about them. So far actual dialogue seems to be a line per page on average and whilst i agree that it is imaginative and fantastic, it is in that respect rather like watching a carnival: One brightly coloured float after another after another after another. I nearly put this one down, but have continued although it is not because i cant put it down, rather i feel i shouldn't.
However it turns out for me i will i think find these extraordinary claims of its brilliance rather odd.

spectacular but opaque
The fantastical/magical story of the struggles of five proud generations of the Buendia family in a fictional small town deep in the interior of post-independence conflict-torn developing Columbia.

Very readable. The descriptions are rich. The episodes of drama are intense. The characters and events are striking but opaque. Just when it feels that someone or something could get very interesting, when it seems that you could really start getting some novel insight or understanding, the narrative moves on - there is over five generations of family history to cover.

At the end of a session of reading, it feels like waking after an epic dream, or a rainy afternoon watching obscure art house films. You never really enter into the psychologies any of the characters, and, out of a Latin American context, the allegories and historical resonances have no meaning. You are just left with a piece of sustained spectacular theatre.

Practically a religion
One of the most erotic and moving books I have ever read - a great poetic summary of the human condition. Rotations and cycles of blood and humour and sex and violence and the whys and the wherefores and the no whys and no wherefores. I kept having to put it down simply to take in the sheer genius of some passages. Deeply deeply brilliant.