Que la mama grande sea la dueña de los colores de la bandera habla de la elocuencia de Garcia Marquez. No se pierdan esta genial historia.

If you like Gabriel Garcia Marquez... you will love this collection of stories. They are a must read for lovers of magical realism. These stories are the type you can smell and taste. This is the original stuff before everyone started doing it (Isabel Allende for example) and nobody has done it better or will do it better. Nobel Price winner GGM is the most important writer alive and arguably the most important writer of the 20th century...

It's inevitable that this book should be somewhat off-putting compared to One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera--Autumn of the Patriarch isn't really meant to be a 'pleasant' read. It is a grim portrait of the title character, and other characters come and go without having inner lives of their own; they have relevance only insofar as they intersect with his life. It is without a doubt one of the least novelistic novels you will ever read--indeed, in many ways it's more like a prolonged character study than a novel.

Some people complain about the style in which the book is written--no paragraph breaks, few chapter breaks, long run-on sentences (the final chapter--fifty pages or so--is one massive sentence), perspective shifts mid-sentence and even mid-clause--but the truth of the matter is that, although this can become a little bit wearing at times, it is by no means 'difficult.' Not in the sense that Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, and Absalom, Absalom! are difficult. It can occasionally be disorienting, but in general it's always pretty easy to tell what's going on, and the style results in a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere that, I think, is perfect for describing the General's long, nightmarish reign. Sure, it could have been written in a more conventional style, and it could well have still been a good book, but Garcia Marquez's decision to push narrative boundaries provides just the right feel. After all, the General is a composite of many Meso and South American tyrants, and to couch his reign in more concrete, everyday terms would have taken away some of his universality (his selling of the Caribbean is a clear demonstration of this, as well as one of the most striking literary metaphors you'll ever encounter). He isn't really a human being; he's an implacable, negative force. For all his flailing around, occasionally making half-hearted and futile efforts to change, his life ultimately has no other meaning.

Autumn of the Patriarch certainly isn't the best of Garcia Marquez's movels to start with (that would be One Hundred Years of Solitude, of course), but it's an important part of his oeuvre, even if it's not as 'fun.' I recommend it to literate people everywhere.

If you are reading the reviews for this book, and certain phrases-'painful read,' 'if restructured it might be better,' 'why such a difficult style'-make you weary about reading it, please imagine a French poodle at the park vehemently yapping bark, I think, barkbarkbark, this book, is hard.

I suggest you give the dog a bone and a nice pat on his fluffy head. Then keep on walking.

The structure and style of this book DO have a purpose. Moreover, it is very readable, but if you came here quickly after reading "One Hundred Years," please make sure you have at least read (and enjoyed) some Woolf, Faulkner, and more recently, Saramago (a reader's lack of exposure to certain styles should not be a reason to limit its usage).

In 1958, upon witnessing the fall of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela, G.G. Marquez decided he would one day write a book about a dictator, an ineluctable subject for most Latin American writers who have lived under the messianic absurdities of dictators and peremptory "presidencialismos" (there are four big books about dictators already, and yes, I too have thought about writing one).

For ever now, Messianic leaders have surfaced, almost without exception, in every Latin American country. And the narrator of the "Autumn of the Patriarch," like Marquez thinking about dictators for 10 years before writing about them, like an immortal that has traveled to every one of these afflicted countries, back and forth throughout time, compiles in his narrative not the history or histories of dictatorships, but the memory of them all, the yearning of a whole continent ravaged by dictators and the wistful hope that they, this human plague, will forever vanish. The beginning of the book supports this contention:

"Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace, destroyed with their pecking the wired screens on the windows and removed with their wings the time stuck inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke from its lethargy of centuries with the warm and tender breeze of a great dead man and of rotted greatness."

And all throughout the book the narrator hopes but doubts that the dictator is really dead: "We knew that no evidence of his death was final, because there was always another truth behind the truth."

Read this way, as the tale of a narrator that has seen them all, the structure of the novel comes together, and the long sentences, the midsentence changes in point of view, and the seemingly excessive surrealism, become not just parts of an "artistic" text: they are the thousands of Latin American that in their dreams, in their sad recollections of tyrannical times, had fiercely hoped that the plague will end.

This is not a novel with a story, though it is a monstrous tale. It is a fantastic description of the rotten guts of tyranny. Enormous, steaming sentences, reeking with exotic images and jaguar tracks contain a sorrowful epic of the surreal politics of hot, underdeveloped places that know more corruption than justice. Weaving in and out, from one person's thoughts to another's, from one time to a second, with almost no dialogue, no conversation, no quotation marks, but moving from the mind of a general to dictator to "the people" to the female love interest and back again, Garcia Marquez spins a horrific story that is unlikely to be similar to anything you have read before. Maybe you will be satisfied to read this as a 'one-off' kind of book that demands your total attention, all your powers of imagination and your determination. It is not a simple novel. I realized that Milorad Pavic, the Serbian author of fantastic tales, owes much to Garcia Marquez, sometimes even images (eggs of a certain day, news-spreading parrots).

The "Patriarch" is the ur-dictator, the tyrant personified, an old man who never steps down, who rules behind a double whose death thus gives rise to a legend of immortality. The dictator's underlings invent Potemkin everything; his palace is full of cripples, blind people, lepers, and domestic animals; he is a monster who, like all the tyrants he represents, cannot love, but only cultivate power. There is his mother, who failed to be a saint, the dynamited clergyman, the roasted general, the nun-mistress, the murdered children, the wife eaten by dogs. Was there anything he did not violate or corrupt ? Garcia Marquez gives one of the best-written pictures of the corruption of absolute power. The dictator is unnamed, perhaps a composite of Colombians, perhaps more. We find Stalin in him, Hitler, Mao, Idi Amin, and Saddam Hussain. And the reaction of the crowd, the mass, is the same every time. "The only thing that gave us security on earth," they say, "was the certainty that he was there....dedicated to the messianic happiness of thinking for us, knowing that we knew that he would not take any decision for us that did not have our measure..." In the end, they mourned him---as Russians did mourn Stalin---despite the massacres, the coups and brutal suppressions, the repression of religion, the selling off of every resource the country had---because they had wound up not knowing what would become of them without him.

Brilliant imagery, product of a fantastic imagination, that pours out on the pages, seemingly with endless abundance, can only dazzle a reader. It's a stunning novel whose moral may be that "a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth.." The person who understands and exploits this is the most dangerous type of human being. Unfortunately they exist in all countries and have appeared throughout history. THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH is not really a South American, magico-realist novel, though it is that. It is a painting of the human tragedy.

John-Samuel Mackay
5/23/02

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. "They've killed Santiago Nasar!" This book contains various accounts of a murder in a small Colombian town. Each townsperson tells a different story about how Santiago Nasar was killed by the Vicario brothers to avenge their sister, who lost her virginity to Santiago. The narrator is interviewing people 27 years after the murder happened. The only similarities in all the testimonies is that Pedro and Pablo Vicario told everyone about their plan to kill Santiago, yet no one prevented it from happening. The author does a good job of setting the scene, however there are at times too many details. Not much is said about the lives of the people outside of this event. Each person's account is described in greater detail until finally the actual moment of his death is told. After the murder Pedro and Pablo are arrested and they give in without a fight. They tell the court that they are proud of what they did, and that they had been planning it for as long as they knew about their sister's virginity. The plan was to avenge their sister. The brothers pretty much want the crime to be seen in the largest detail possible. That is why it is a "Death Foretold." In my opinion I enjoyed reading the basic facts and hearing the story according to many different people. What made me lose focus was the endless detail in which everything was described. Honestly, do we really need to know about every relative of every character in the book? Other than that this book held my attention to the very end. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written many other novels and short stories. I have read one of his short stories A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, which I enjoyed very much. That short story describes the magical realism of an angel falling in someone's back yard. The story then becomes about what the family does with the angel as their back yard gets flooded with visitor. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is similar in the way that it captures the magical realism surrounding the murder. "Did they actually kill him after telling so many people? Chronicle is a short, action-packed novel that will keep you guessing. Even the ending of the book in some ways leaves you hanging. The last image is the exact moment Santiago Nasar dies, and nothing at all is mentioned afterward. The ending begins to lead readers to believe that there will be a sequel to this book. I definitely feel intrigued to read more of the works by Marquez.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's brilliant novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, is a journalistic perspective of the events surrounding a murder. Wriiten as a narrative, Marquez reports in a style unlike any other, while exposing his talent for the use of literary techniques, most importantly dramatic and situational irony. His effective and profound satire on religion and the law add to the strength of the book as a whole. Marquez's use of his original technique, magical realism, makes the novel even more unique. This adds surreal aspects to the plot which are characteristic of Marquez alone. Although Chronicle is humorous at times, Marquez never allows the reader to forget the purpose of his story. He slowly feeds the many layers of the story to the reader, who is eager for every bite. I highly recommend this piece of literature, not only as a good mystery, but as a story with a theme which has relevence for anyone's life.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Marquez is an excellent book. Written in a investigative-reporting style, it contains suspense, satire, and irony. The setting of the book is a small town in Colombia. The plot is simple: two brothers have a responsibility, by tradition, to kill a man accused by their sister as her perpetrator. Although the brothers take on the task it seems that they are not very comfortable with the idea of committing a murder and they don't let any opportunity go by when they announce their intentions to the towns people (almost in hope that someone will stop them). The irony lays in the fact that almost the whole town knows about the brothers' plan way before the victim or his mother finds out. Marquez does a great job satirizing religion, the legal system and the society as a whole. The reader is told about the murder in the first few pages of the book but the narrator reveals the details slowly through out the book. The book makes you think: what would you do if you were in the shoes of one of the characters? how could you have prevented the death foretold ? how would you deal with a similar situation in real life: would you caution the victim and notify the authorities or would you be indifferent (thinking that someone else will do it)? The book was fun and interesting to read. I recommend Chronicle of Death Foretold highly especially if you are a looking for a mystery book which takes you in another culture this should be your first pick. Plus its easy and quick to read.

Master novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez comes through again with another winner with his portrayl of a dying Simon Bolivar. The story is comprised of reflections and anecdotal information on the liberators life, going back and forth in time ,shifting decades with memories of times past and how Bolivar sees the end days approaching. As he travels down the Magdalena River ( a sort of farewell tour) the ghosts of his past surface, including the many loves, his enemies, his allies, his fading dream of unification and those who betrayed him. His memories assault his journey making death nearly a desired relief for the sick and shadow of the great man of vision for Latin America. When reading a historical novel like this one the question arises as to whether the information is factual or purely imagination. I finished reading this book wanting to believe some of the memories of Simon Bolivar were true and accurate to his life. In the end Marquez clarifies this point saying he was not concerned about the accuracies of the final days since those with him left no written record of the final days. However, Marquez does go on to say that he did considerable research(2 years) revealing often contradictory information filled with inaccuaracies while he labored through voliminous documentation. He also consulted with various historians, from several different countries, who are experts on the life of Simon Bolivar to further enrich the exactitude of the novel. Many changes were made from the original manuscript. That said, there are things to be learned from this novel that only the simplicity of historical novels can provide. For furthe exploration of the life of Simon Bolivar it is suggested to read Eugenio Gutierrez Celys "Bolivar Day by Day " or the work of Bolivar biographer Vinicio Romero Martinez. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the writtings of Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the life of Simon Bolivar and his dream for Latin America.

One of my good friends is the person whose opinion I trust most when it comes to books and literature. And, I'm happy to say, we usually agree on what's good and what's not so good. Although my friend loves Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "The General in His Labyrinth," however, is one book my friend didn't like and I did.

"The General in His Labyrinth" tells the story of the melancholy and sad final journey of General Simon Bolivar, fondly known as "The Liberator" in many South American countries. Bolivar is the man who drove the Spanish from the northern part of South America during 1811-1824, even though the local aristocracy chose to fight against him. In the end, he became a sad and defeated man, old before his time and burdened with the knowledge that his dream of a unified South America would not be realized during his lifetime.

Although Bolivar is revered in much of South America (and the world in general), his final days were quite unhappy. In this book, Garcia Marquez takes us along with Bolivar on his final cruise along the Magdalena River from Colombia to the sea. Bolivar was sad, disillusioned, in shock from the after effects of an assassination attempt and suffering from an unspecified illness; in short, this mythic man had become old at the very young age of forty-six.

After Bolivar had been denied the presidency of Colombia he decided to spend his final days in Europe, far away from political strife of any kind. But Bolivar wouldn't have been Bolivar had he not given his life to the people. His dreams of living in peace in Europe were dashed when the government that replaced him failed.

It didn't take years of history to make Bolivar larger than life. He was larger then life to those who knew him intimately as well as to those who knew him only by reputation. And no wonder...he possessed a terrible temper, a extraordinarily passionate nature and his political and leadership abilities were virtually unsurpassed. Everyone paled next to Bolivar, in life just as (almost) everyone pales next to him in this book. (His enemy, Santander, and his commander, Sucre, are two notable exceptions. His lover, Manuela Saenz is also a well drawn character, but Bolivar's valet, Jose Palacios lets us know that, other than saving Bolivar from assassination, she was really nothing special, just one more lover among very many.)

I read, in a interview with Garcia Marquez, that the voyage along the Magdalena was chosen to be fictionalized since this was a little-known episode in a very publicly-lived life. Personally, I think it was a wonderful choice. The voyage was one that was no doubt filled with melancholy and nostalgia and no one writes of melancholy and nostalgia, especially South American melancholy and nostalgia, as well as does Garcia Marquez. This is a book in which real memories become confused with the hallucinations of delirium, a confusion that is only enhanced by the descriptions of the steamy jungle interior. The floods, the oppressive heat, the epidemics that Bolivar and his weary band of supporters encounter only serve to enhance "The Liberator's" own physical decline.

I also think that showing us Bolivar, not at the height of his glory, but at what was no doubt one of the lowest points of his life, was also a wonderful choice. Bolivar was, apparently, a man of contradictions. He was flamboyant and mythic, yet ultimately tragic; he could be elegant in public matters yet coarse in private; he was obviously a genius at strategy, yet his last days were filled with the incoherence of illness. And, all along the way, through this maze of contradictions, Garcia Marquez never loses sight of the one driving force in Simon Bolivar's life: his desire for a unified South America.

I also love the way Garcia Marquez twists and folds the narrative of this book until the reader isn't quite sure what's real and what's fevered hallucination; what really happened and what didn't. Of course, Garcia Marquez is a master at just this sort of narrative and he really outdoes himself in this book.

In the end, Bolivar, himself, decides that South America is ungovernable; it is, he declared, a land that will inevitably fall into the hands of tyrants, both large and small. Sadly, Bolivar's prophecy seems to be, at least in part, true. And, even more sadly still, although the world has come to love and rever "The Liberator," "The Liberator," himself, died a sad and defeated man.

The General in His Labyrinth marked a radical departure in style for the Nobel Prize winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. While his previous works of fiction were deeply imbued with the culture of his native Colombia, this book was the first to draw directly from the tortured and labyrinthine history of the region. The General in His Labyrinth tells the story of General Simon Bolivar, known as "The Liberator," in many South American countries.

After leading the revolution that freed the northern part of South American from Spanish rule, Bolivar attempted to unite the regions into one country. He was opposed by the local aristocracy, however, because, "the oligarchies in each country...had declared war to the death against the idea of integrity because it was unfavorable to the local privileges of the great families." Bolivar, as a consequence, suffered great disillusionment due to the failure of his dreams.

The General in His Labyrinth is a semi-fictionalized account of Bolivar's final days, in particular, his last voyage along the Magdalena River from Bogota, Colombia to the sea. Bolivar had renounced the presidency of the Republic of Colombia and had planned to leave the political strife and civil war that followed the expulsion of the Spanish from South America. Disillusioned, consumptive and still reeling from an assassination attempt, he intended to sail down the Magdalena, travel to Europe and live his remaining days in peace. But Bolivar was a man of tenacious dreams and the plight of his people, coupled with the failure of their governments, forced him back into the political arena to once again seek the realization of his efforts.

Bolivar was an almost mythic figure, who, even before his death appeared larger-than-life. Although he was well-known for his unparalled leadership abilities, he also possessed a passionate nature and titanic temper. Such a figure, of course, dominates this book, much as Bolivar's presence dominated during his lifetime. The other characters simply pale in comparison, although this is not a criticism; Bolivar was simply so overwhelming that almost everyone paled beside him. The only notable exceptions are those characters who never actually appear in the novel, other than in their remembrances of the General: Santander, his political enemy; Sucre, his most able commander; and Manuelita, the General's loyal and loving mistress.

Garcia Marquez says he picked the voyage down the Magdalena to fictionalize because it was the least known episode in a well-known and very publicly-lived life. His reasons were also, no doubt, thematic. Bolivar's voyage contains a symbolic power that Garcia Marquez utilizes to excellent effect. In this master writer's hands, the trip becomes one of both nostalgia and sentiment for the glories and hopes of youth. As the General and his large entourage float through the steamy jungle towards the sea, the General floats in and out of sickness and delirium and his memories become inextricably linked to hallucination. The attitudes and discomforts of illness and old age also play a prominent role in this story, and their effects of the body are described in detail. This is, however, no Love in the Time of Cholera, for in that book, old age was accepted, even if disliked, and tolerated with more than a modicum of comedy.

Some people may detect a distinct difference in style between this book and Garcia Marquez's masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude. I don't think this was deliberate on Garcia Marquez's part. I read Garcia Marquez, first in Spanish then in English, and in Spanish, the difference in style is not so readily apparent. One Hundred Years of Solitude was translated into English by Gregory Rabassa, Garcia Marquez's longtime translator, while this book was translated by Edith Grossman, something that may, and no doubt does, account for the stylistic differences in the English translation.

The combination of Garcia Marquez's enormous myth-making talent and Bolivar's own mythic persona makes for extremely intriguing reading. The dangers the author conquered are multiple and range from public censure to an excess of factual information at the expense of creativity. Not surprisingly, Garcia Marquex succeeds, even with the difficult task with which he presented himself. Coupled with the genius of Garcia Marquez, Simon Bolivar's epic accomplishments and near-mythic character give this book an immediacy and intimacy that still manages to resonate. And it never diminishes the towering presence of the Liberator.