The more I read Gabo, the more I felt very close to him; almost like a paternal figure. Me, as journalist, was very influenced by his work, but I guess that almost every journalist in Colombia and Latin America has been influenced by the great Gabo. I love that guy, he wasn't just a great writer, but a great human being.
García Márquez: Forty years of Companionship. Towards the end of 1975, soon after I turned 20, the beautiful colombian girl who had been my lover for a few precious months, gave me – by way of consolation for ending our relationship – One Hundred Years of Solitude. "Read this", she said, "and you will understand my country and why everyone at home is talking about Gabo".
At first the book did little to comfort my insatiable longing for her. Its narrative seemed as impenetrable as the mountains and swamps that José Arcadio Buendía tries to cross in search of the sea before founding Macondo.
I had not the patience for this journey except that in the final pages, an erotic encounter between Amaranta Ursula and Aureliano evoked a peculiar yearning which still troubles my memory nearly 40 years on. I could not at the time face the fact that this writer had the power to reveal my soul's longing in a way which felt too unsafe for me to admit.
I read nothing more until he published Love in the Time of Cholera which miraculously described further my experience of romantic love. I have not stopped reading Gabriel García Márquez ever since. He understands love better than William Shakespeare.
by Kalumba
I found One Hundred Years of Solitude in the guest library of a hotel I was working at in Mexico. It was one of the few books in English I had found, so I swooped on it and shoved it up my shirt. It was truly magical and enhanced my experience of Mexico and Latin America and led me to other great Latin American works. This enhanced love of all things Latino meant that my six-month work placement in Mexico turned into 7 amazing years, not quite 100 and certainly not in solitude, as I met my husband here also!
When I left Chile in 1976, One Hundred Years of Solitude came with me. Living in a foreign land has been hard, reading about Macondo in the middle of the night has helped me to survive my own solitude and this very old book with stay near me for ever. There is hope.
by Anthonyw4
On a hot and lazy Sunday afternoon in August, 1997, during one of the most painful periods in my life, I sat down and read Love In The Time Of Cholera – and all the ugliness in my life and all the pain just melted away...
When I finished the book, I drifted off to sleep to the sound of Ry Cooder's Cancion Mixteca – a beautiful novel, followed by a beautiful song – a perfect end to a perfect day.
by muhammedaa
I read One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1996, while my mother and I nursed her mother through the final months of terminal cancer. I had grown up with my grandmother and her stories. She was born in 1912 and did not go to school, instead she rode wild horses through prickly pear on the central western Queensland cattle property her father had built from scrub. She grew up with tribal Aborigines, with the Depression, self-sufficiency, but also dressing for dinner and having books sent out from England by boat.
The experience of reading One Hundred Years of Solitude at this time changed my life. My grandmother died about the same time I finished the book, and I returned to my inner city bohemian share house in Sydney and sold all my possessions. I then began four years of constant travel around Australia and around the world. I earned my money by being a street musician, boat builder, farm laborer and smuggler. I had entered the world of possibility and coincidence.
For me the fluid, cyclical and charmed world of One Hundred Years of Solitude cast a glow over everyday life. It gave me courage to take a chance, to throw caution to the wind and step outside the habits and routines of what is expected by some unwritten social code. The characters shimmered and flickered and died, not living safe and predictable lives, but remaining true to their inner thoughts and feelings. The world is amazing. This is what Gabriel Garcia Marquez taught me.
by Didgebaba
I have never been surrounded by journalists, so I still question myself about how or why did I become one of them. Nevertheless, there is a secret in my family that could reveal the truth. One of my uncles is Jose Mejia Garzon, a tailor whose profession was passed on by my grandpa. Jose became the man chosen by highly reputed politicians, entrepreneurs and journalists to design and make up their suits. One of those personalities was Gabriel García Márquez.
My godmother, Mariela, as well as other relatives joined the business. She was in charge of sewing by hand the pieces of fabric to be tried on by clients before the suits were finalized. She used to work at my grandmother's place, a big house in Chapinero neighborhood in Bogotá that now is used as a storage unit.
My uncle Jose always took the fabrics he had cut before so that my godmother could sew them. It was 1984 and I had just been born. According to my relatives, she used to wrap me up in the fabrics the Colombian Nobel had chosen for their suits and say: “You will be a writer like Mr. García Márquez”. Maybe that early influence led me to study journalism. I would have liked tell Gabo this story personally. He did not know, neither did I, but maybe that was when I started to be what I am today. Fly high yellow butterfly!
I wrote my uni thesis on his works, after a lefty Spanish ex-girlfriend got me into his writings during our relationship.
Although most revere One Hundred Years of Solitude, in my opinion Love in the Time of Cholera is by far the better, sweeter and more memorable novel. But it's his short story in the Strange Pilgrims collection about the young Madrid boys who drowned themselves in light that still raises goosebumps to recall it decades later...
by JonnyBoy5000
I read One Hundred Years of Solitude with my mother in Chinese. We live in a city deep inland in China. I bought the book from a contraband bookselling vendor (as it is a rampant establishment in China.) We were both very moved by the story. As I was taking courses on Latin America, I became especially appreciative of the history of struggle with the country's fate the book illuminates, whereas my mother became more drawn to the fate of the protagonists as individuals. As always, I enjoyed reading the book with my mother, who is a literary aficionado, with her interest confined by the cultural revolution happened in China between 1966 and 1976. The book resonates with her because her longed individual freedom in expressions and feelings, the book resonates with me because my awareness of my own country's fate and the concern for its future.
Our readings of the book mirror two generations' journeys of emotion and consciousness under a changing totalitarian country. I feel closer to my mother, through our common appreciation of the book, and the shared feelings the book arose. We are both saddened by the Garcia Marquez's death. I am currently living in a country thousands miles away from China, and have been away from home for two years. I got the news from my mom via the internet. A sudden but profound loneliness crept into my consciousness again. I miss my mother. I miss the hot summer night, where we were lying in bed discussing the Garcia Marquez, cultural revolution, and the fate of China...
I was in Norway, aged 18, and falling head over heels in love with an incredible girl when I first heard of Gabriel García Márquez. My love was unrequited, and in my gloom someone I met in the pub recommended Love in the Time of Cholera to me. Thank you that man – it made my heart sing and sing. Ten years later I suffered again from agonising unrequited love, and once again I read this beautiful book. It somehow turns the unbearable into the beautiful.
by ID9153347
Reading aloud: One Hundred Years of Solitude was the first adult book I read in its entirety when I was around 12 years old. I read it again later and loved it even more but then travelling in the US I met this amazing man and we cycled around the Washington state, and he read the book aloud in the evening, while we were camping under the stars.
by lasimo
He has been my umbilical cord: When I left Chile in 1976, One Hundred Years of Solitude came with me. During all these years, this book , the same copy, has been my contact with my roots, my family, my past life. When nights are too long, too dark and too far, I open the draw to take it out and reading any page a familiar place comes to my memory and help me to survive the night. With him, something has died inside me.
by Anthonyw4
I went back to reading Márquez recently, after reading One Hundred Years of Solitude in high school. It was so impressive to a young mind that I still talk about it to my daughter, who is becoming an avid reader – though too young for Márquez right now.
I read A Chronicle of a Death Foretold and it blew my mind. It is a unique book, a story told with such precision, speed and ability. As with other books that stand out, it shows once more that it is not always what happens to the characters – we know what happens from the title but how the story is told.
I thought to myself, where was I all these years, how come I had not read this before? I then read Love in Time of Cholera – another extraordinary story in a completely different style. So throughout my reading life there are Márquez moments, books I will always remember and treasure.
by duduriri
I did Spanish 'A' Level in 1989. I was quite a book reader at the time – at least for a 17 year-old football fan/boy. Then she (the teacher, Ms Morris) got us to read El Coronel no tiene quien le escriba. And I was gone. To South America. Into the heady concoction of dreams, reality, Catholicism, exotic birds, oppressive weather, coffee, parades, tradition, blooming colours... And then I read page 2. And I've never returned since.
I visited my dad's cousin in London soon after, as I was wont to do. She had a floor-to-ceiling wall of books from around the world. Her three daughters – at that time in their early/mid 20s, up to whom I looked with great affection and awe – were living in South and Central America (one still does, in Colombia) and had influenced the book choices in that London household. I spotted more García Márquez, asked to borrow and became lost in his world for a second time: this time The Very Old Man With Enormous Wings. Intense feelings gripped me then and still do to-day upon re-reading this, or indeed any of his incomparable work.
His words, his echoes, his thoughts, his wisps of dreamy tales have haunted and followed me for 25 years since. I cannot nor desire to shift him from my way of thinking. His books changed my life, like my wife and my 7-week-old son who I clasp to my chest as I type this one-fingered, for the better. And forever. Gracias, señor.
by Tone22
One Hundred Years of Solitude: there were two scenes from the book that made me cry so much that I had to close the book to recover. One of them was when Ursula' s older son returns to the village with his body covered in tattoos. When his mother goes to meet him and appears among the crowd that greets him, he barely looks at her.
by ellnman
Gabo gave my student paper a story: in the late eighties I helped run a student Spanish-language paper called 'El Otro' at the now merged Westfield College, University of London, with Ana Clavell. We discussed our lack of heavyweight contributions to the paper and I said we needed a South-American short story writer, but how would we ever afford their fee? Ana somehow found out Gabo's number (she had that great knack for people's numbers), phoned him and he gave us The Airplane of the Sleeping Beauty for publication after a five-minute chat with her.
by Avocet
One Hundred Years of Solitude is epic, and Love in the Time of Cholera is haunting, but my favorite García Márquez book is the slender masterpiece Chronicle of a Death Foretold. All his patent literary and stylistic tropes are here, but more refined, trimmed of its fat, and presented in much, much more human terms. I was 20 years old, studying in the art college, when I first read it. There is a strange fragile elegance to it which I've been looking for in all other books I've read since, without success.
by halfanapple
I began 'Love in the Time of Cholera' a few months ago as part of an insistence that I should independently study a Spanish-language novel for my A Level Spanish cultural topic. Having heard the name of Marquez only vaguely in the past, this choice was little more than a search through famous Spanish-language novels to find one that might appeal, especially for a student who had never made it beyond the realm of English literature. I never imagined that I would end up falling for a book so entirely. I loved every minute of reading it, but the really ground-breaking point for me must have been the quote: 'once he had told her something that she could not imagine: that amputees suffer pains, cramps, itches, in the leg that is no longer there. That is how she felt without him, feeling his presence where he no longer was.' At that moment, the relationships within the novel really clicked and I firmly understood that I had stumbled upon a brilliant author.
I'm a youngish mother of two. I'm reading Cien Años de Soledad on the narrow geraniumed balcony of our home in La Elipa, Madrid. It was hot. Summer hot. Little Ones and their dad were having siesta. I was keeping a certain independence of spirit through this time of my own. Trying to understand an imagination that was difficult for me. I will now leave that flowered balcony and read again those Cien Años de Soledad with a further thirty years of moons. Surely it will be another book.
I just returned from my first trip to South America seven years ago.. totally in love with the place and its people, and heartbroken for being back in Europe.. I borrowed the book in our local library.. some Czechoslovakian socialist edition from the 70-ties.. I locked myself with it in my then little rent countryside flat.. staying in bed, reading, crying, smiling.. being touched by magic and beauty.. enjoying the solitude..
by Martina Pastier on Facebook
It took me 10 years to finish Love In The Time Of Cholera because I hated the idea of finishing it and no longer being part of an adventure like any other. To read a few pages every month let me believe I was part of a fantastic journey of the human spirit.
I first read One Hundred Years of Solitude as I was backpacking around the world in the late 1970s. In the days before the internet, iPads and Kindles books were precious commodities on the backpackers' trail. One carried two or three books (generally 2 novels, one copy of South-East Asia on a Shoestring), selected them carefully to get the best reading value, and exchanged them equally carefully to get the best value from the trade. I can't remember the book I traded to get One Hundred Years of Solitude (one of the most prized books among backpackers at the time) or what I passed it along for. But I will never forget the impact the book had on me. I had just finished a literature degree, and my whole literary education through high school and university was based firmly on the English-language (particularly English) classics, supplemented by a few Russian greats. One Hundred Years of Solitude was the first book I had read from Latin/South American/Spanish-language culture and it was mind-expanding. The beauty, magic and sensuality of the writing came at a time when my mind was opening to new cultures and ways of thinking through the experience of travel, and this book (followed by Love in the Time of Cholera — my favourite, too) was a key part of this process. Literature can't be more valuable than this.