One Hundred Years of Solitude
Hundred Years of Solitude is the most famous novel by Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The work was first published by the Sudamericana publisher in Spanish in 1967 in Buenos Aires (Argentina). By 1970, the story had been printed in Spanish more than half a million copies, not to mention two times printed in Cuba was one hundred thousand copies. There were then 17 contracts asking for permission to translate the work into other languages. So far, the work has been translated into more than 30 languages around the world, including Vietnam, awarded the Italian Chianchiano award, recognized by France as the best book of the year and rated by American literary critics. Price is one of the 12 best books of the 1960s. This is considered a masterpiece by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, along with the works of the colonel waiting for letters, The Autumn of the Elder, Hundred Years of Solitude to the author honored to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez began writing Hundred Years of Solitude in early 1965. Before that, between 1961 and 1965, with literature, he did not write a line due to the psychological fear of failure from previous works. In January 1965, while driving from Mexico City to the Acapulco resort, Garcia Marquez stopped his car and said to his wife, Mercedes Barcha: “I have found the tone! I will tell this story. His grandmother’s wooden face was dry as she told him strange stories, starting that afternoon when the baby was taken by his father to see ice. ”
Garcia Marquez collected $5,000 in savings and friends helped to pay for his wife’s family expenses, and he closed writing for 18 months. When the book was completed, his wife said that the family owed $10,000. To deposit the manuscript, Garcia Marquez had to sell some valuable household items. Published in 1967, One Hundred Years of Solitude immediately hit the ground.
The story is about a clan and the village they lived in, Macondo for a hundred years, is like a part of the history of Colombia. Macondo is a village imagined by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, based on his memories of his childhood village, which he recounted in his memoir Living to Tell (Vivir para contarla). The Buendia family consists of 7 generations. The first in the line was Jose Acardio Buendia and the last of the line, Aureliano, was eaten by ants when he was just born. This lineage exiled itself into the lonely realm to run away from incest.
According to the memoir Living to tell, many events and characters of the Hundred Years of Solitude were taken from real life by the author. Colonel Aureliano Buendía has many similarities with Garcia Marquez’s grandfather: the same colonel of the Liberals during the war. But Garcia Marquez’s maternal grandfather killed a man in a showdown, which coincides with José Arcadio Buendía’s character in the novel. The character Úrsula Iguarán resembles Marquez’s grandmother, who was also blind later in life. Aureliano Babilonia’s group of friends at the end of the novel, including a character with the surname Marquez, were a group of Garcia Marquez’s friends when he entered the press. The massacre also happened once and his home town had a period of prosperity and decline like Macondo. The Banana Company in the novel resembles an American fruit company that once built in his hometown.