Thursday, August 21, 2008

one hundred years of solitude

Alas!!!Finally I'm done reading this book.This is my reaction until reading the very last page of this book because I misplaced this book and i don't know where did i put this when i moved to my new apartment,until last week i found it mixed up with my unused clothes in my luggage.

Here in Saudi Arabia the more i develop, I love and appreciate the hobby on reading novels.Reading became my past time here,maybe because I don't have any options aside from blogging because here is very different mind you there is no public cinema here very different from the country i came from and watching movies with my friends is one of my hobbies before.I am an occasional reader and it depends on the book that i read, sometimes too lazy to finish reading a novel.But this novel is a must to be read book,highly recommended by my writer friend in the Philippines.

There is only one bookstore here in KSA that carries English books on there choices and that is Jarir Bookstore and copies is very limited thats why you have to phoned them so that they will reserved a copy for you. I am lucky i get one.What inspired me after reading the book is to make a family tree for my clan to trace my roots.To all my friends this is a magnificent novel please do read and enjoy the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Spanish: Cien años de soledad) is a novel by Nobel Prize winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that was first published in Spanish in 1967 (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana), with an English translation by Gregory Rabassa released in 1970 (New York: Harper and Row). The book is widely considered García Márquez's magnum opus, metaphorically encompassing the history of Colombia or Latin America.


The novel chronicles a family's struggle and the history of their fictional town, Macondo, for one hundred years. García Márquez acknowledges in his autobiography
Living to Tell the Tale that Macondo was based on the towns where he spent his childhood. Like many other novels by Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude crosses genres, combining elements of history, magical realism, and pure fiction.

One Hundred Years of Solitude does not have a plot in the conventional sense of the word. Instead, Marquez uses the novel to explore a literary conceit, to wit: that it is vitally important for people to remember their history, otherwise they will suffer for it. Taking this as his theme, Marquez illustrates it repeatedly throughout the novel in a number of seemingly unconnected incidents which make up the narrative.




By using different incidents to illustrate the same theme throughout the novel, Marquez is able to disconcert the reader with significant changes in the emotional tone. For example: in the whimsical case of Remedios the Beauty's assumption into heaven, one is led to think that the lack of memory for history leads to the innocent blurring of myth and reality. However, this is then contrasted with the incident of a violent massacre, which is effectively covered up by the authorities, leading one to question whether Marquez does not intend the novel to be a biting criticism of terrible human rights abuses which may have happened in Colombia, and Latin America generally.


Tellingly, the village of Macondo is completely destroyed at the end of the novel, along with all traces of its existence: implying that its inhabitants have failed to make any lasting impression on history, and that there is now no longer any method of determining whether any of the events in the novel might be true or not.

5 comments:

meow said...

kaloka naman, wala pala dyan public cinema, panu nalang ang cinema -elya marathon???!!! hahahaha! nakakamiss naman ang mga movie premiere nights na prizes mo!!!

as ever, you too love to read! since you recommend, i'll get one din to read! haaaay remember mo ang mga paolo coello, mitch albom days with matching highlights and take down notes!hahaha! tapos nagbabatuhan tayo ng mga lines from the novel! hahahahaha!ka miss!!!

meow said...

i already got myself a copy! sale sa nbs, last copy na! the cover is not the same with the one posted in your blog. and it has the oprah's book club logo sticker! nways, i hope matapos ko na din!

mightydacz said...

enjoy reading meow.

Nebz said...

i read it some ten years ago and it has remained as one of my favorite. Try Isabel Allende. Her books are equally magical.

RJ said...

Narrations lang din ba halos lahat? Tulad ng Love in the Time of Cholera?

Mahusay syang mag describe, pro gusto ko may mga conversations din sana, quotations...

Di ko pa nga natapos ang Love in the Time of Cholera. Pag lumabas na rito ang movie, tiyak papanoorin ko nalang.