“One Hundred Years of Solitude: (Spanish title Cien anos de soledad). A novel (1967; English translation 1970) by the Columbian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928-2014), generally regarded as the archetypal example of Latin American magical realism. The setting is the small, isolated Columbian village of Macondo, a fictional community that had previously appeared in Garcia Marquez’s La hojarasca (1955; Leafstorm and Other Stories) and in La mala hora (1962; In Evil Hour). The novel follows seven generations of the increasingly inbred Buendia family, the founders of the village, and their story parallels the history of Columbia itself.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.