gabriel g marquez

How can a book be so beautiful and yet so disturbing at the same time? This is something that Marquez seems to excel at; he uses prose that is lyrical and poetic to describe situations and characters that are deeply unsettling, even horrific. He presents both the best and the worst of human...

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is exactly what it says on the tin. It is the story of a murder publicly announced before the event and observed by the whole town who do little beyond verbal protestations to stop it. What it is not is Marquez’s signature magical realism; this is pure realism and...

Having previously read One Hundred Years of Solitude I was slightly disappointed by Love in the Time of Cholera and I’m struggling to pin down exactly why. It may have been due to my expectations, the writing, the subject matter or the translator, I’m just not sure. Maybe it was a combination of...

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. The opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude gives some hints of what’s to come although not all the hints are apparent untilafter...

Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez has died aged 87. A sad day I think for all lovers of fiction and particularly for those of us who have an interest in Latin American literature and particular in the genre known as 'Magic Realism' which Marquez in inexorably linked to. Whilst his death...