The General in His Labyrinth

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by Gabriel García Márquez


  'Brilliantly moving. A tour de force' A.S. Byatt 'A compassionate, witty and unforgettable masterpiece' Daily Telegraph

  'At once nostalgic and satiric, a resplendent fable' Sunday Times

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  GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

  ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

  'The greatest novel in any language of the last 50 years. Marquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do' Salman Rushdie 'Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice ...'

  Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly founded village where Jose Arcadio Buendia and his strong-willed wife, Ursula, have started their new life. As the mysterious Melquiades excites Aureliano Buendia's father with new inventions and tales of adventure, neither can know the significance of the indecipherable manuscript that the old gypsy passes into their hands.

  Through plagues of insomnia, civil war, hauntings and vendettas, the many tribulations of the Buendia household push memories of the manuscript aside. Few remember its existence and only one will discover the hidden message that it holds...

  'Should be required reading for the entire human race' New York Times

  'No lover of fiction can fail to respond to the grace of Marquez's writing' Sunday Telegraph

  'It's the most magical book I have ever read. I think Marquez has influenced the world' Carolina Herrera

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  GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

  STRANGE PILGRIMS

  'Filled with greedy joys, with small pleasures, polished like apples against a sleeve' Observer

  'The first thing Senora Prudencia Linero noticed when she reached the port of Naples was that it had the same smell as the port of Riohacha ...'

  Their distant, nostalgic memories of home, their sense of anonymity in a foreign land, the terrifying pang of vulnerability they feel as they step over the threshold into an alien world ...

  Marquez's strange pilgrims - the ageing prostitute preparing for death by teaching her dog to weep at her grave, the panicked husband scared for the life of his injured wife, the old man who allows his mind to wander on a long-haul flight from Paris - experience with all his humour, warmth and colour, what it is to be a Latin American adrift in Europe or, indeed, any outsider living far from home.

  'Celebratory and full of strange relish at life's oddness. The stories draw their strength from Marquez's generous feel for character, good and bad, boorish and innocent' William Boyd 'The most important writer of fiction in any language' Bill Clinton

  'Often touching, often funny, always unexpected, the experience is as enriching as travel itself' New Statesman

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  GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

  THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH

  'It asks to be read more than twice, and the rewards are dazzling' Observer

  'Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside ...'

  As the citizens of an unnamed Caribbean nation creep through dusty corridors in search of their tyrannical leader, they cannot comprehend that the frail and withered man laying dead on the floor can be the self-styled General of the Universe. Their egocentric, maniacally violent leader, known for serving up traitors to dinner guests and drowning young children at sea, can surely not die the humiliating death of a mere mortal?

  Tracing the demands of a man whose egocentric excesses mask the loneliness of isolation and whose lies have become so ingrained that they are indistinguishable from truth, Marquez has created a fantastical portrait of despotism that rings with an air of reality.

  'Delights with its quirky humanity and black humour and impresses by its total originality' Vogue

  'Captures perfectly the moral squalor and political paralysis that enshrouds a society awaiting the death of a long-term dictator' Guardian

  'Marquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do' Salman Rushdie

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  GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

  THE STORY OF A SHIPWRECKED SAILOR

  'A gripping tale of survival' The Times

  'On February 22 we were told that we would be returning to Colombia ...'

  In 1955, eight crew members of Caldas, a Colombian destroyer, were swept overboard. Velasco alone survived, drifting on a raft for ten days without food or water. Marquez retells the survivor's amazing tale of endurance, from his loneliness and thirst to his determination to survive.

  The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor was Marquez's first major, and controversial, work, published in a Colombian newspaper, El Espectador, in 1955 and then in book form in 1970.

  'The story of Velasco on his raft, his battle with sharks over a succulent fish, his hallucinations, his capture of a seagull which he was unable to eat, his subsequent droll rescue, has all the grip of archetypal myth. Reads like an epic' Independent

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  THE BEGINNING

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  First published in Spain as El General en Su Laberinto by Mondadori Espana, Madrid 1989

  This English translation first published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape 1990

  First published in Penguin Books 1991

  This edition published 2014

  Copyright (c) Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1989, 1990

  Copyright (c) Mondadori Espana, S. A., 1989

  Map copyright (c) George Colbert, 1990

  Cover (c) Steve McCurry/Magnum Photos

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the copyright holders has been asserted

  A portion of this book appeared originally in the New Yorker

  ISBN: 978-0-141-91724-5

 

 

 


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