1
00:00:06,491 --> 00:00:11,887
One day in 1965, while driving to Acapulco
for a vacation with his family,

2
00:00:11,887 --> 00:00:17,406
Colombian journalist Gabriel García 
Márquez abruptly turned his car around,

3
00:00:17,406 --> 00:00:21,638
asked his wife to take care of the
family’s finances for the coming months,

4
00:00:21,638 --> 00:00:24,469
and returned home.

5
00:00:24,469 --> 00:00:28,686
The beginning of a new book 
had suddenly come to him:

6
00:00:28,686 --> 00:00:31,792
“Many years later, 
as he faced the firing squad,

7
00:00:31,792 --> 00:00:36,122
Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember 
that distant afternoon

8
00:00:36,122 --> 00:00:40,183
when his father took him to discover ice.”

9
00:00:40,183 --> 00:00:42,008
Over the next eighteen months,

10
00:00:42,008 --> 00:00:46,307
those words would blossom 
into One Hundred Years of Solitude.

11
00:00:46,307 --> 00:00:49,542
A novel that would go on 
to bring Latin American literature

12
00:00:49,542 --> 00:00:52,007
to the forefront 
of the global imagination,

13
00:00:52,007 --> 00:00:57,214
earning García Márquez 
the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature.

14
00:00:57,214 --> 00:01:00,862
What makes One Hundred Years of Solitude 
so remarkable?

15
00:01:00,862 --> 00:01:03,831
The novel chronicles the fortunes
and misfortunes

16
00:01:03,831 --> 00:01:07,584
of the Buendía family 
over seven generations.

17
00:01:07,584 --> 00:01:10,461
With its lush, detailed sentences,

18
00:01:10,461 --> 00:01:14,106
large cast of characters,

19
00:01:14,106 --> 00:01:17,100
and tangled narrative,

20
00:01:17,100 --> 00:01:21,502
One Hundred Years of Solitude 
is not an easy book to read.

21
00:01:21,502 --> 00:01:23,730
But it’s a deeply rewarding one,

22
00:01:23,730 --> 00:01:27,613
with an epic assortment 
of intense romances,

23
00:01:27,613 --> 00:01:29,068
civil war,

24
00:01:29,068 --> 00:01:30,867
political intrigue,

25
00:01:30,867 --> 00:01:33,000
globe-trotting adventurers,

26
00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:37,677
and more characters 
named Aureliano than you’d think possible.

27
00:01:37,677 --> 00:01:39,994
Yet this is no mere historical drama.

28
00:01:39,994 --> 00:01:43,397
One Hundred Years of Solitude 
is one of the most famous examples

29
00:01:43,397 --> 00:01:49,089
of a literary genre 
known as magical realism.

30
00:01:49,089 --> 00:01:51,519
Here, supernatural events or abilities

31
00:01:51,519 --> 00:01:55,084
are described in a realistic 
and matter-of-fact tone,

32
00:01:55,084 --> 00:01:57,661
while the real events of human life 
and history

33
00:01:57,661 --> 00:02:01,811
reveal themselves 
to be full of fantastical absurdity.

34
00:02:01,811 --> 00:02:05,634
Surreal phenomena within the
fictional village of Macondo

35
00:02:05,634 --> 00:02:11,286
intertwine seamlessly with events taking
place in the real country of Colombia.

36
00:02:11,286 --> 00:02:14,529
The settlement begins 
in a mythical state of isolation,

37
00:02:14,529 --> 00:02:17,643
but is gradually exposed 
to the outside world,

38
00:02:17,643 --> 00:02:20,381
facing multiple calamities along the way.

39
00:02:20,381 --> 00:02:23,620
As years pass, 
characters grow old and die,

40
00:02:23,620 --> 00:02:25,763
only to return as ghosts,

41
00:02:25,763 --> 00:02:29,722
or to be seemingly reincarnated 
in the next generation.

42
00:02:29,722 --> 00:02:32,318
When the American fruit company 
comes to town,

43
00:02:32,318 --> 00:02:36,931
so does a romantic mechanic who is
always followed by yellow butterflies.

44
00:02:36,931 --> 00:02:39,142
A young woman up and floats away.

45
00:02:39,142 --> 00:02:43,214
Although the novel moves forward 
through subsequent generations,

46
00:02:43,214 --> 00:02:46,407
time moves in an almost cyclical manner.

47
00:02:46,407 --> 00:02:50,183
Many characters have similar names 
and features to their forebears,

48
00:02:50,183 --> 00:02:52,882
whose mistakes they often repeat.

49
00:02:52,882 --> 00:02:56,092
Strange prophecies 
and visits from mysterious gypsies

50
00:02:56,092 --> 00:03:01,129
give way to the skirmishes 
and firing squads of repeated civil wars.

51
00:03:01,129 --> 00:03:04,651
An American fruit company opens 
a plantation near the village

52
00:03:04,651 --> 00:03:07,873
and ends up massacring thousands 
of striking workers,

53
00:03:07,873 --> 00:03:12,733
mirroring the real-life 
‘Banana Massacre’ of 1928.

54
00:03:12,733 --> 00:03:15,002
Combined with the novel’s magical realism,

55
00:03:15,002 --> 00:03:19,065
this produces a sense 
of history as a downward spiral

56
00:03:19,065 --> 00:03:21,492
the characters seem powerless to escape.

57
00:03:21,492 --> 00:03:25,016
Beneath the magic is a story 
about the pattern of Colombian

58
00:03:25,016 --> 00:03:28,811
and Latin American history 
from colonial times onward.

59
00:03:28,811 --> 00:03:32,712
This is a history that 
the author experienced firsthand.

60
00:03:32,712 --> 00:03:37,697
Gabriel García Márquez grew up
in a Colombia torn apart by civil conflict

61
00:03:37,697 --> 00:03:40,897
between its Conservative 
and Liberal political parties.

62
00:03:40,897 --> 00:03:43,385
He also lived in an autocratic Mexico

63
00:03:43,385 --> 00:03:47,991
and covered the 1958 Venezuelan 
coup d’état as a journalist.

64
00:03:47,991 --> 00:03:52,356
But perhaps his biggest influences 
were his maternal grandparents.

65
00:03:52,356 --> 00:03:57,131
Nicolás Ricardo Márquez was a
decorated veteran of the Thousand Days War

66
00:03:57,131 --> 00:04:01,056
whose accounts of the rebellion against
Colombia's conservative government

67
00:04:01,056 --> 00:04:04,883
led Gabriel García Márquez 
to a socialist outlook.

68
00:04:04,883 --> 00:04:09,733
Meanwhile, Doña Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes’
omnipresent superstition

69
00:04:09,733 --> 00:04:13,738
became the foundation 
of One Hundred Years of Solitude’s style.

70
00:04:13,738 --> 00:04:17,135
Their small house in Aracataca 
where the author spent his childhood

71
00:04:17,135 --> 00:04:20,580
formed the main inspiration for Macondo.

72
00:04:20,580 --> 00:04:22,468
With One Hundred Years of Solitude,

73
00:04:22,468 --> 00:04:25,061
Gabriel García Márquez 
found a unique way

74
00:04:25,061 --> 00:04:28,144
to capture the unique history 
of Latin America.

75
00:04:28,144 --> 00:04:33,142
He was able to depict the strange reality 
of living in a post-colonial society,

76
00:04:33,142 --> 00:04:36,745
forced to relive 
the tragedies of the past.

77
00:04:36,745 --> 00:04:40,221
In spite of all this fatalism,
the novel still holds hope.

78
00:04:40,221 --> 00:04:41,823
At his Nobel Lecture,

79
00:04:41,823 --> 00:04:45,393
García Marquez reflected 
on Latin America’s long history

80
00:04:45,393 --> 00:04:48,552
of civil strife and rampant iniquity.

81
00:04:48,552 --> 00:04:53,452
Yet he ended the speech by affirming the
possibility of building a better world,

82
00:04:53,452 --> 00:04:58,090
to quote, “where no one will be able
to decide for others how they die,

83
00:04:58,090 --> 00:04:59,917
where love will prove true

84
00:04:59,917 --> 00:05:01,772
and happiness be possible,

85
00:05:01,772 --> 00:05:05,198
and where the races condemned 
to one hundred years of solitude

86
00:05:05,198 --> 00:05:09,774
will have, at last and forever,
a second chance on earth."