One Hundred Years of Solitude

One of the most influential literary works of our time, One Hundred Years of Solitude remains a dazzling and original achievement by the masterful Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature — now available as a Harper Perennial Olive Edition.

"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. . . . García Márquez has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound, meaningful, and meaningless in life." —William Kennedy, National Observer

The story of the village of Macondo, as seen through the lives of seven generations of the Buendía family, is told with Marquez’s trademark mastery of magical realism. The founders, José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán, establish the village while camping on a riverbank, after José dreams about a "city of mirrors" that would reflect the world. The people of the town - which is solitary and disconnected from the outside world, save for a band of nomads that visits every year - experience extraordinary events across generations, until they are finally unable to hide from the the newly independent government of Colombia. Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling. The novel has been translated into dozens of languages, making it a classic of truly global proportions.