ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

Having finished a densely written 422 pages ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, I can say with utmost conviction that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a master spinner of yarn of the finest quality. The fabric that he creates in the form of this novel has a texture of magic realism and is designed with the uneven patches of Colombian history interspersed with the trials and tribulations of the Buendias family. The fictional village of Macondo could be taken as a microcosm of the Colombian nation. It is a great work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez whose whole career has been defined by this one book although he has written several others and which former president Clinton has been on record saying it as his all time favourite novel. Some people may find it a difficult read because the narrative though linear at one level, also stretches back and forth in time and adopts this tragi-comic tone throughout and where the mundane and extraordinary events take place simultaneously and seamlessly merge into each other to create a world like no other. So if you stay with it, you will get sucked into his web. I have no doubt in my mind that Salman Rushdie has drawn heavily from the style of Mr. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and that MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN has its template this luminous ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE.