One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

I own two copies of One Hundred Years of Solitude. One is a paperback that I got for Christmas from my aunt, and the other is a library discard first (english) edition from 1970. When I received the paperback for Christmas, I knew it was time to finally read it. 

Set in Columbia, One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of a family and Macando, the town they founded. The real and surreal blend and become inseparable in this novel. Women can float away with sheets and children can be born with pig tails just as easily as men and women fall in love, and war shatters a peaceful existence. 

Macando begins as a tiny village cut off from the outside world and visited only by gypsies who bring flying carpets, ice, and magnets. As time passes, the outside world intrudes, bringing outside laws and conflicts. 

The brutal civil war that politically divides the town and takes Colonel Aureliano Buendia  far from home severs the village forever from its history of self-governance and self-reliance. In many ways, Colonel Aureliano is the most tragic of all the characters. He represents something real--he is the man (or woman) who fought and still fights against oppressive regimes for the right to collective, local power only to discover that the governments and corporations are stronger. 

Eventually, Macando becomes a "banana republic" of sorts. A fruit company moves in, builds fences, brings foreigners and exploits the local workers. When the workers seek justice, the company claims that they are not actually employees. One of my favourite lines in the book also happens to be one of the saddest and most frustrating (frustrating because it rings too true): "by decision of the court it was established and set down in solemn decrees that the workers did not exist." 

Eventually, when it rains for six years straight (a surreal plot point) the fruit company abandons the muddy town and leaves it and its residents to succumb to decline. 

There's so much more I could say about this book, but I'm still processing it all. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a masterpiece and fully deserving of all the praise it has received over the years. Macando could be any town in South America, or in the world really.