One Hundred Years of Solitude:a review

written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of the Nobel Prize for Literature winners, this book is hailed as one of the finest novels of the 20th century. i cant agree more.

i was interested to read Marquez because when i was writing my MA dissertation on Rushdie's novels, there were a lot of critical essays comparing Rushdie to him. it was more of a curiosity on my part, as Rushdie is my favourite writer. i really wanted to find out their similarities.

the book sat on my shelf for a few months, because i have the habit of buying books for my collection (with every intention of reading each of them). what's more, literary texts arent the kind of novels that you can just read and watch tv at the same time.

and so, i brought the novel along with me when i was on the flight bound to kl, and i was surprised that i enjoyed reading it.

it is a story of a prominent family set in South America, from its first pioneering ancestor with the ambition of an alchemist, to its last descendant who commits incest and therefore brings the downfall of the family. each generation has its great moments, and also suffering. a lot of things happening at once that i was overwhelmed, and confusion arose as the descendants were named after their forefathers, so i lost track of who's who. but Marquez did a good job of weaving the story, and i found the similarity between Marquez and Rushdie. both employ magic realism in their writing, and the ending of this book is almost similar to that in Rushdie's Midnight's Children, as both protagonists are overwhelmed by the multitude and let themselves be "swallowed".

i thought about the book for more than a day. that's a great compliment, because the only other book that affected me that way was Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance.

thumbs up.