I am in love. Yes, you read it right. I am in love with a Colombian who goes by the name Gabriel Garcia Marquez. As with ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’, ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ immerses you in a surreal world of ‘magical realism’; where you are forced to intertwine reality with the improbable and eventually concoct the two in to one inseparable potion of ecstasy.
The story is about an enchanted land called Macondo – a land lost in the realms of time – where life persisted in solitude and transformed itself from the world of discovery to the world of illusion and desolation. It’s a chronicle of the Buendia family which starts with a promise, achieves acmes of success, and oscillates through wretched self destructing cycle of decrepitude.
Marquez paints vivid and biblical images of Macondo undergoing transformation through times of progress, despair through war, and ignorance through times of gloom. He explores layers of human psyche through juxtaposition with various characters in the novel spanning from angelic innocence of Remedios , barbaric ferocity Jose Arcadio, listless ego of Col. Aureliano Buendia, carnal angst of Aureliano Babilonia and tenacity of Ursula. He mesmerizes and challenges known institutions of human thought through his fable set in solitude, set in misery, set in ignominy and set in turbulence. Life seems to repeat as history is re-learnt through mistakes and future is prophesied and pre-established by the past.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a masterpiece which can be architected only once in a while. It’s a challenge to the accepted framework of human thoughts and would devour your being in to ‘magical realism’. Go celebrate your thoughts and challenge its limits.
