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

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Colombian journalist Gabriel García 
Márquez abruptly turned his car around,

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

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and returned home.

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

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“Many years later, 
as he faced the firing squad,

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Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember 
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 
into One Hundred Years of Solitude.

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A novel that would go on 
to bring Latin American literature

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to the forefront 
of the global imagination,

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earning García Márquez 
the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature.

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What makes One Hundred Years of Solitude 
so remarkable?

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The novel chronicles the fortunes
and misfortunes

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of the Buendía family 
over seven generations.

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With its lush, detailed sentences,

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arge cast of characters,

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and tangled narrative,

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100 Years of Solitude 
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 
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 
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 
is one of the most famous examples

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of a literary genre 
known as magical realism.

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Here, supernatural events or abilities

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

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while the real events of human life 
and history

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reveal themselves 
to be full of fantastical absurdity.

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Surreal phenomena within the
fictional village of Macondo

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

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The settlement begins 
in a mythical state of isolation

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but is gradually exposed 
to the outside world,

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facing multiple calamities along the way.

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As years pass, 
characters grow old and die,

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only to return as ghosts,

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or to be seemingly reincarnated 
in the next generation.

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When the American fruit company 
comes to town,

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

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A young woman up and floats away