Gabriel Garcia Marquez: 6 March 1927-17 April 2014.
Nobel Prize winner and world renowned Colombian novelist and journalist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, died last Thursday, 17 April, aged 87 years. Gabo, as he was affectionately known, has left the world with a wonderful legacy: his books. These were written in a literary style known as magical realism, where the narrative blends magical elements with an otherwise realistic environment. Widely considered as the most influential Spanish writer of the 20th Century, now is the to read, or re-read one his novels-request a copy from the Library.
The Autumn of the Patriarch.
'Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside.'
As the citizens of an unnamed Caribbean nation creep through the dusty corridors of the presidential palace in search of their tyrannical leader, they cannot comprehend that the frail and withered man laying dead on the floor can be the self-styled General of the Universe. Their egocentric, maniacally violent leader, known for serving up traitors to dinner guests and drowning young children at sea, can surely not die the humiliating death of a mere mortal?
Tracing the demands of a man whose egocentric excesses mask the loneliness of isolation and whose lies have become so ingrained that they are indistinguishable from truth, Marquez has created a fantastical portrait of despotism that rings with an air of reality.
No one writes to the Colonel
'The Colonel took the top off the coffee can and saw that there was only one little spoonful left.'
Fridays are different, every other day of the week, the Colonel and his ailing wife fight a constant battle against poverty and monotony, scraping together the drags of their savings for the food and medicine that keeps them alive. But on Fridays the postman comes - and that sets a fleeting wave of hope rushing through the Colonel's ageing heart.
For fifteen years he's watched the mail launch come into harbour, hoping he'll be handed an envelope containing the army pension promised to him all those years ago. Whilst he waits for the cheque, his hopes are pinned on his prize bird and the upcoming cockfighting season. But until then the bird - the Colonel and his wife - must somehow be fed . . .
Memories of my melancholy whores
The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself a gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.'
He has never married, never loved and never gone to bed with a woman he didn't pay. But on finding a young girl naked and asleep on the brothel owner's bed, a passion is ignited in his heart - and he feels, for the first time, the urgent pangs of love.
Love in the Time of Cholera
Florentino Ariza has never forgotten his first love. He has waited nearly a lifetime in silence since his beloved Fermina married another man. No woman can replace her in his heart. But now her husband is dead. Finally – after fifty-one years, nine months and four days – Florentino has another chance to declare his eternal passion and win her back. Will love that has survived half a century remain unrequited?
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Widely regarded as Gabriel Garcia Marquez' best work, this classic novel follows 100 years in the life and death of the mythical South American village, Macondo.
Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly founded village where José Arcadio BuendÃa and his strong-willed wife, Úrsula, have started their new life. As the mysterious MelquÃades excites Aureliano BuendÃa'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.
The Autumn of the Patriarch.'Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside.'
As the citizens of an unnamed Caribbean nation creep through the dusty corridors of the presidential palace in search of their tyrannical leader, they cannot comprehend that the frail and withered man laying dead on the floor can be the self-styled General of the Universe. Their egocentric, maniacally violent leader, known for serving up traitors to dinner guests and drowning young children at sea, can surely not die the humiliating death of a mere mortal?
Tracing the demands of a man whose egocentric excesses mask the loneliness of isolation and whose lies have become so ingrained that they are indistinguishable from truth, Marquez has created a fantastical portrait of despotism that rings with an air of reality.
No one writes to the Colonel'The Colonel took the top off the coffee can and saw that there was only one little spoonful left.'
Fridays are different, every other day of the week, the Colonel and his ailing wife fight a constant battle against poverty and monotony, scraping together the drags of their savings for the food and medicine that keeps them alive. But on Fridays the postman comes - and that sets a fleeting wave of hope rushing through the Colonel's ageing heart.
For fifteen years he's watched the mail launch come into harbour, hoping he'll be handed an envelope containing the army pension promised to him all those years ago. Whilst he waits for the cheque, his hopes are pinned on his prize bird and the upcoming cockfighting season. But until then the bird - the Colonel and his wife - must somehow be fed . . .
Memories of my melancholy whores The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself a gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.'
He has never married, never loved and never gone to bed with a woman he didn't pay. But on finding a young girl naked and asleep on the brothel owner's bed, a passion is ignited in his heart - and he feels, for the first time, the urgent pangs of love.
Love in the Time of CholeraFlorentino Ariza has never forgotten his first love. He has waited nearly a lifetime in silence since his beloved Fermina married another man. No woman can replace her in his heart. But now her husband is dead. Finally – after fifty-one years, nine months and four days – Florentino has another chance to declare his eternal passion and win her back. Will love that has survived half a century remain unrequited?
Widely regarded as Gabriel Garcia Marquez' best work, this classic novel follows 100 years in the life and death of the mythical South American village, Macondo.
Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly founded village where José Arcadio BuendÃa and his strong-willed wife, Úrsula, have started their new life. As the mysterious MelquÃades excites Aureliano BuendÃa'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.
