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Gabriel García Márquez was born in 1927 in the town of Aracataca, Columbia. Latin America's preeminent man of letters, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. García Márquez began his writing career as a journalist and is the author of numerous other works of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels The Autumn of the Patriarch and Love in the Time of Cholera, and the autobiography Living to Tell the Tale. There has been resounding acclaim for his life's work since his death in April 2014.

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One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning career.

The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.

Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility -- the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth -- these universal themes dominate the novel. Whether he is describing an affair of passion or the voracity of capitalism and the corruption of government, Gabriel García Márquez always writes with the simplicity, ease, and purity that are the mark of a master.

Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal, and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling. Translated into dozens of languages, this stunning work is no less than an accounting of the history of the human race.

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One Hundred Years of Solitude

By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

HarperCollins

ISBN: 0-06-053104-5

Chapter One

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, ColonelAureliano Buenda was to remember that distant afternoon whenhis father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo wasa village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a riverof clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, whichwere white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world wasso recent that many things lacked names, and in order toindicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during themonth of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up theirtents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes andkettledrums they would display new inventions. First theybrought the magnet. A heavy gypsy with an untamed beard andsparrow hands, who introduced himself as Melquades, put on abold public demonstration of what he himself called the eighthwonder of the learned alchemists of Macedonia. He went fromhouse to house dragging two metal ingots and everybody wasamazed to see pots, pans, tongs, and braziers tumble down fromtheir places and beams creak from the desperation of nails andscrews trying to emerge, and even objects that had been lostfor a long time appeared from where they had been searched formost and went dragging along in turbulent confusion behindMelquades' magical irons. "Things have a life of their own,"the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. "It's simply amatter of waking up their souls." Jos Arcadio Buenda, whoseunbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of natureand even beyond miracles and magic, thought that it would bepossible to make use of that useless invention to extract goldfrom the bowels of the earth. Melquades, who was an honestman, warned him: "It won't work for that." But Jos ArcadioBuenda at that time did not believe in the honesty ofgypsies, so he traded his mule and a pair of goats for the twomagnetized ingots. rsula Iguarn, his wife, who relied onthose animals to increase their poor domestic holdings, wasunable to dissuade him. "Very soon we'll have gold enough andmore to pave the floors of the house," her husband replied.For several months he worked hard to demonstrate the truth ofhis idea. He explored every inch of the region, even theriverbed, dragging the two iron ingots along and recitingMelquades' incantation aloud. The only thing he succeeded indoing was to unearth a suit of fifteenth-century armor whichhad all of its pieces soldered together with rust and insideof which there was the hollow resonance of an enormousstone-filled gourd. When Jos Arcadio Buenda and the four menof his expedition managed to take the armor apart, they foundinside a calcified skeleton with a copper locket containing awoman's hair around its neck.

In March the gypsies returned. This time they brought atelescope and a magnifying glass the size of a drum, whichthey exhibited as the latest discovery of the Jews ofAmsterdam. They placed a gypsy woman at one end of the villageand set up the telescope at the entrance to the tent. For theprice of five reales, people could look into the telescope andsee the gypsy woman an arm's length away. "Science haseliminated distance," Melquades proclaimed. "In a short time,man will be able to see what is happening in any place in theworld without leaving his own house." A burning noonday sunbrought out a startling demonstration with the giganticmagnifying glass: they put a pile of dry hay in the middle ofthe street and set it on fire by concentrating the sun's rays.Jos Arcadio Buenda, who had still not been consoled for thefailure of his magnets, conceived the idea of using thatinvention as a weapon of war. Again Melquades tried todissuade him, but he finally accepted the two magnetizedingots and three colonial coins in exchange for the magnifyingglass. rsula wept in consternation. That money was from achest of gold coins that her father had put together over anentire life of privation and that she had buried underneathher bed in hopes of a proper occasion to make use of it. JosArcadio Buenda made no attempt to console her, completelyabsorbed in his tactical experiments with the abnegation of ascientist and even at the risk of his own life. In an attemptto show the effects of the glass on enemy troops, he exposedhimself to the concentration of the sun's rays and sufferedburns which turned into sores that took a long time to heal.Over the protests of his wife, who was alarmed at such adangerous invention, at one point he was ready to set thehouse on fire. He would spend hours on end in his room,calculating the strategic possibilities of his novel weaponuntil he succeeded in putting together a manual of startlinginstructional clarity and an irresistible power of conviction.He sent it to the government, accompanied by numerousdescriptions of his experiments and several pages ofexplanatory sketches, by a messenger who crossed themountains, got lost in measureless swamps, forded stormyrivers, and was on the point of perishing under the lash ofdespair, plague, and wild beasts until he found a route thatjoined the one used by the mules that carried the mail. Inspite of the fact that a trip to the capital was little lessthan impossible at that time, Jos Arcadio Buenda promised toundertake it as soon as the government ordered him to so thathe could put on some practical demonstrations of his inventionfor the military authorities and could train them himself inthe complicated art of solar war. For several years he waitedfor an answer. Finally, tired of waiting, he bemoaned toMelquades the failure of his project ...

(Continues...)

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