Product Description

'Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.' Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly founded village where Jose Arcadio Buendia and his strong-willed wife, Ursula, have started their new life. As the mysterious Melquiades excites Aureliano Buendia's father with new inventions and tales of adventure, neither can know the significance of the indecipherable manuscript that the old gypsy passes into their hands. Through plagues of insomnia, civil war, hauntings and vendettas, the many tribulations of the Buendia household push memories of the manuscript aside. Few remember its existence and only one will discover the hidden message that it holds...This new edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most celebrated novel is published to coincide with celebrations to mark the 80th birthday of this Nobel Prize winning author in 2007.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5568 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Review
'No lover of fiction can fail to respond to the grace of Marquez's writing' Sunday Telegraph'It's the most magical book I have ever read... I think [Marquez] has influenced the world' Caroline Herrera'The book that sort of saved my life' Emma Thompson'It's so much fun to read, unexpected and beautiful' Darryl Hannah'The greatest novel in any language of the last 50 years' Salman Rushdie'Should be required reading for the entire human race' New York Times

Synopsis
'Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.' Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly founded village where Jose Arcadio Buendia and his strong-willed wife, Ursula, have started their new life. As the mysterious Melquiades excites Aureliano Buendia's father with new inventions and tales of adventure, neither can know the significance of the indecipherable manuscript that the old gypsy passes into their hands. Through plagues of insomnia, civil war, hauntings and vendettas, the many tribulations of the Buendia household push memories of the manuscript aside. Few remember its existence and only one will discover the hidden message that it holds...This new edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most celebrated novel is published to coincide with celebrations to mark the 80th birthday of this Nobel Prize winning author in 2007.

About the Author
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927- ) was born in Aracataca, Colombia. His most recent book, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, is his first new novel to be published in a decade and is available in paperback from Penguin from August 2007. He is the author of several novels and collections of short stories, including Leaf Storm (1955); One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967); The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975); Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981) and The General in His Labyrinth (1989). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

Customer Reviews

best book
I read this book in about two days, I just couldn't put it down. I cared about the characters, when they were happy I was happy, when they were sad so was I. When I finished the book I spent half an hour looking at the cover, opened it again, started reading and decided I couldn't put myself through all the sad bits again.

A friend who's an English teacher loved it, she read it when she was supervising the mocks. She hated when one of the students needed her attention she didn't want to stop reading.

The only fault this book has is that when I finished it for about six months after any book I started seemed boring. This is my favorite book, I'm still looking for a book better than this but so far none have come close.

I agree with bloodsimple....
I have really tried with this book, yes its surpose to be a masterpeice and was recently voted in the top 100 best literary fict books, but what is the story? Where's the plot??? I have never ever ever given up on a book,but this is a first. Love in the time of cholorea YES this one NO! Frankly I'm being generous giving it two stars.

Is there anybody out there? The search for realism
I needed to find someone who didn't think this book was 'the best book in any language of the last fifty years', whose life was not saved by it, and who does not consider it a work of sheer genius, and thank heaven i found some (some of the other reveiwers here).
I'm still readin it, trying not to give up, but i feel like the events are being described to me by someone who is watching it while i sit there removed from the action. There are very few lines of actual dialogue and little sense of the moments the people go through despite some exquisite descriptions. I know, that should be a contradictory statement but there we are. Fantastic and imaginative are not the same as interesting or captivating and whilst it might turn out to be a book i smply cant help reading, so far i feel like i'm soldiering on.
Perhaps the people who think this is an imaginative work of genius have spent a lot of time with people with no imaginations, thus making this gentleman appear as the god they declare him to be.
probably would have enjoyed it more thus far without such bizzarly over the top praise.