The Autumn of the Patriarch

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The Autumn of the Patriarch Page 7

by Gabriel García Márquez


  1968–1975

  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD

  COLLECTED STORIES

  IN EVIL HOUR

  INNOCENT ERENDIRA AND OTHER STORIES

  LEAF STORM

  LIVING TO TELL THE TALE

  LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

  MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES

  NEWS OF A KIDNAPPING

  NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL

  OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS

  ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

  STRANGE PILGRIMS

  THE GENERAL IN HIS LABYRINTH

  THE STORY OF A SHIPWRECKED SAILOR

  www.penguin.com

  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD

  ‘My favourite book by one of the world’s greatest authors. You’re in the hands of a master’ Mariella Frostrup

  ‘On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on …’

  When newly-wed Ángela Vicario and Bayardo San Román are left to their wedding night, Bayardo discovers that his new wife is no virgin. Disgusted, he returns Ángela to her family home that very night, where her humiliated mother beats her savagely and her two brothers demand to know her violator, whom she names as Santiago Nasar.

  As he wakes to thoughts of the previous night’s revelry, Santiago is unaware of the slurs that have been cast against him. But with Ángela’s brothers set on avenging their family honour, soon the whole town knows who they plan to kill, where, when and why.

  ‘A masterpiece’ Evening Standard

  ‘A work of high explosiveness – the proper stuff of Nobel prizes. An exceptional novel’ The Times

  ‘Brilliant writer, brilliant book’ Guardian

  www.penguin.com

  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  COLLECTED STORIES

  ‘The stories are rich and unsettling, confident and eloquent. They are magical’ John Updike

  Sweeping through crumbling towns, travelling fairs and windswept ports, Gabriel García Márquez introduces a host of extraordinary characters and communities in his mesmerising tales of everyday life: smugglers, bagpipers, the President and Pope at the funeral of Macondo’s revered matriarch; a very old angel with enormous wings. Teeming with the magical oddities for which his novels are loved, Márquez’s stories are a delight.

  ‘These stories abound with love affairs, ruined beauty, and magical women. It is essence of Márquez’ Guardian

  ‘Of all the living authors known to me, only one is undoubtedly touched by genius: Gabriel García Márquez’ Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no one else can do’ Salman Rushdie

  www.penguin.com

  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  IN EVIL HOUR

  ‘A masterly book’ Guardian

  ‘César Montero was dreaming about elephants. He’d seen them at the movies on Sunday …’

  Only moments later, César is led away by police as they clear the crowds away from the man he has just killed.

  But César is not the only man to be riled by the rumours being spread in his Colombian hometown – under the cover of darkness, someone creeps through the streets sticking malicious posters to walls and doors. Each night the respectable townsfolk retire to their beds fearful that they will be the subject of the following morning’s lampoons.

  As paranoia seeps through the town and the delicate veil of tranquility begins to slip, can the perpetrator be uncovered before accusation and violence leave the inhabitants’ sanity in tatters?

  ‘In Evil Hour was the book which was to inspire my own career as a novelist. I owe my writing voice to that one book!’ Jim Crace

  ‘Belongs to the very best of Márquez’s work … Should on no account be missed’ Financial Times

  ‘A splendid achievement’ The Times

  www.penguin.com

  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  INNOCENT ERÉNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES

  ‘These stories abound with love affairs, ruined beauty, and magical women. It is the essence of Márquez’ Guardian

  ‘Eréndira was bathing her grandmother when the wind of misfortune began to blow …’

  Whilst her grotesque and demanding grandmother retires to bed, Eréndira still has floors to wash, sheets to iron, and a peacock to feed. The never-ending chores leave the young girl so exhausted that she collapses into bed with the candle still glowing on a nearby table – and is fast asleep when it topples over …

  Eight hundred and seventy-two thousand, three hundred and fifteen pesos, her grandmother calculates, is the amount that Eréndira must repay her for the loss of the house. As she is dragged by her grandmother from town to town and hawked to soldiers, smugglers and traders, Eréndira feels herself dying. Can the love of a virgin save the young whore from her hell?

  ‘It becomes more and more fun to read. It shows what “fabulous” really means’ Time Out

  ‘Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do’ Salman Rushdie

  ‘One of this century’s most evocative writers’ Anne Tyler

  www.penguin.com

  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  LEAF STORM

  ‘Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do’ Salman Rushdie

  ‘Suddenly, as if a whirlwind had set down roots in the centre of the town, the banana company arrived, pursued by the leaf storm’

  As a blizzard of warehouses and amusement parlours and slums descends on the small town of Macondo, the inhabitants reel at the accompanying stench of rubbish that makes their home unrecognizable. When the banana company leaves town as fast as it arrived, all they are left with is a void of decay.

  Living in this devastated and soulless wasteland is one last honourable man, the Colonel, who is determined to fulfil a longstanding promise, no matter how unpalatable it may be. With the death of the detested Doctor, he must provide an honourable burial – and incur the wrath of the rest of Macondo, who would rather see the Doctor rot, forgotten and unattended.

  ‘The most important writer of fiction in any language’ Bill Clinton

  ‘Márquez is a retailer of wonders’ Sunday Times

  ‘An exquisite writer, wise, compassionate, and extremely funny’ Sunday Telegraph

  www.penguin.com

  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  LIVING TO TELL THE TALE

  ‘A treasure trove, a discovery of a lost land we knew existed but couldn’t find. A thrilling miracle of a book’ The Times

  Living to Tell the Tale spans Gabriel García Márquez’s life from his birth in Colombia in 1927, through his emerging career as a writer, up to the 1950s and his proposal to the woman who would become his wife. Insightful, daring and beguiling in equal measure, it charts how García Márquez’s astonishing early life influenced the man who, more than any other, has been hailed as the twentieth century’s greatest and most-beloved writer.

  www.penguin.com

  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

  ‘An amazing celebration of the many kinds of love between men and women’ The Times

  ‘It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love …’

  Fifty-one years, nine months and four days have passed since Fermina Daza rebuffed hopeless romantic Florentino Ariza’s impassioned advances and married Dr. Juvenal Urbino instead. During that half century, Florentino has fallen into the arms of many delighted women, but has loved none but Fermina. Having sworn his eternal love to her, he lives for the day when he can court her again.

  When Fermina’s husband is killed trying to retrieve his pet parrot from a mango tree, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find new life in the twilight of their lives?

  ‘A love story of astonishing
power and delicious comedy’ Newsweek

  ‘A delight’ Melvyn Bragg

  www.penguin.com

  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES

  ‘A velvety pleasure to read. Márquez has composed, with his usual sensual gravity and Olympian humour, a love letter to the dying light’ John Updike

  ‘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.

  Each night, exhausted by her factory work, ‘Delgadina’ sleeps peacefully whilst he watches her quietly. During these solitary early hours, his love for her deepens and he finds himself reflecting on his newly found passion and the loveless life he had led. By day, his columns in the local newspaper are read avidly by those who recognize in his outpourings the enlivening and transformative power of love.

  ‘Márquez describes this amorous, sometimes disturbing journey with the grace and vigour of a master storyteller’ Daily Mail

  ‘There is not one stale sentence, redundant word, or unfinished thought’ The Times

  www.penguin.com

  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  NEWS OF A KIDNAPPING

  ‘A story only a writer of Márquez’s stature could tell so brilliantly’ Mail on Sunday

  ‘She looked over her should before getting into the car to be sure no one was following her …’

  Pablo Escobar: billionaire drugs baron; ruthless manipulator, brutal killer and jefe of the infamous Medellín cartel. A man whose importance in the international drug trade and renown for his charitable work among the poor brought him influence and power in his home country of Colombia, and the unwanted attention of the American courts.

  Terrified of the new Colombian President’s determination to extradite him to America, Escobar found the best bargaining tools he could find: hostages.

  In the winter of 1990, ten relatives of Colombian politicians, mostly women, were abducted and held hostage as Escobar attempted to strong-arm the government into blocking his extradition. Two died, the rest survived, and from their harrowing stories Márquez retells, with vivid clarity, the terror and uncertainty of those dark and volatile months.

  ‘Reads with an urgency which belongs to the finest fiction. I have never read anything which gave me a better sense of the way Colombia was in its worst times’ Daily Telegraph

  ‘A piece of remarkable investigative journalism made all the more brilliant by the author’s talent for magical storytelling’ Financial Times

 

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