One Hundred Years of Solitude
Pretty unique book. The story telling here is very non-linear for one; the timeline is more like a map in that the past, present, and future are all observed at the same time. It opens with the snippet below, and the mode permeates throughout.
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano BuendÃa was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice, [...]
It’s also very cyclical. The story is about seven generations of Arcadio family, where the same names (and just as confusingly, characteristics and misfortunes) are shared across the many generations. It can make for a somewhat dense read, but it works well as a story telling device. It’s also imbued with magical realism – you’re reading the account of a remote village with limited interaction with the outside world (hence the title), and everything is colored through that lens. Pretty interesting.
This was my first book from a Latin American author, and it’s readily apparent how different that is compared to what I’m otherwise used to. A lot of the themes in the book draw from Latin American history and politik, that alone made it worthwhile. It does take some time to go through the whole thing, I had abandoned it last year and had to start over from scratch because it would’ve been too confusing otherwise (but I’m glad I did).