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One day in 1965, while driving to Acapulco[br]for a vacation with his family,

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Colombian journalist Gabriel García [br]Márquez abruptly turned his car around,

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asked his wife to take care of the[br]family’s finances for the coming months,

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and returned home.

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The beginning of a new book [br]had suddenly come to him:

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“Many years later, [br]as he faced the firing squad,

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Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember [br]that distant afternoon

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when his father took him to discover ice.”

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Over the next eighteen months,

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those words would blossom [br]into One Hundred Years of Solitude.

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A novel that would go on [br]to bring Latin American literature

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to the forefront [br]of the global imagination,

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earning García Márquez [br]the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature.

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What makes One Hundred Years of Solitude [br]so remarkable?

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The novel chronicles the fortunes[br]and misfortunes

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of the Buendía family [br]over seven generations.

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With its lush, detailed sentences,

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arge cast of characters,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and tangled narrative,

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100 Years of Solitude [br]is not an easy book to read.

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But it’s a deeply rewarding one,

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with an epic assortment [br]of intense romances,

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civil war,

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political intrigue,

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globe-trotting adventurers,

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and more characters [br]named Aureliano than you’d think possible.

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Yet this is no mere historical drama.

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One Hundred Years of Solitude [br]is one of the most famous examples

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of a literary genre [br]known as magical realism.

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Here, supernatural events or abilities

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are described in a realistic [br]and matter-of-fact tone,

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while the real events of human life [br]and history

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reveal themselves [br]to be full of fantastical absurdity.

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Surreal phenomena within the[br]fictional village of Macondo

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intertwine seamlessly with events taking[br]place in the real country of Colombia.

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The settlement begins [br]in a mythical state of isolation

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but is gradually exposed [br]to the outside world,

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facing multiple calamities along the way.

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As years pass, [br]characters grow old and die,

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only to return as ghosts,

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or to be seemingly reincarnated [br]in the next generation.

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When the American fruit company [br]comes to town,

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so does a romantic mechanic who is[br]always followed by yellow butterflies.

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A young woman up and floats away