![]() ![]() Mr García Márquez has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound, meaningful, and meaningless in life. One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race. And if you think I’m now laying it on thick, try this quote from William Kennedy in the New York Times Book Review: ![]() There are some beautiful and funny and wise magical-realist books: chief among them, One Hundred Years of Solitude. There are few things more likely to make me start scanning the available exits than a writer earnestly brandishing a 1,000-page manuscript about spirit journeys, ghost wrestling and people whose arms turn into rose bushes whose eyes reveal the black pools of infinity and if only you dive into their dark waters … you know the sort of thing.īut to think in such terms is probably to do a great disservice both to Márquez and a form of writing that once had vital things to say about colonialism, politics, life, death, love and everything. Is there anyone alive now who relishes the prospect of reading another magical realist novel? In my experience as a publisher, it’s the genre that dare not speak its name (or to be more accurate and particular, it’s the genre I never want to hear from again). ![]()
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