When there was nothing left to eat on the plates, the Captain wiped his lips with a corner of the tablecloth and broke into indecent slang that ended once and for all the reputation for fine speech enjoyed by the riverboat captains. For he was not speaking to them or to anyone else, but was trying instead to come to terms with his own rage. His conclusion, after a string of barbaric curses, was that he could find no way out of the mess he had gotten into with the cholera flag.
Florentino Ariza listened to him without blinking. Then he looked through the windows at the complete circle of the quadrant on the mariner's compass, the clear horizon, the December sky without a single cloud, the waters that could be navigated forever, and he said:
"Let us keep going, going, going, back to La Dorada."
Fermina Daza shuddered because she recognized his former voice, illuminated by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and she looked at the Captain: he was their destiny. But the Captain did not see her because he was stupefied by Florentino Ariza's tremendous powers of inspiration.
"Do you mean what you say?" he asked.
"From the moment I was born," said Florentino Ariza, "I have never said anything I did not mean."
The Captain looked at Fermina Daza and saw on her eyelashes the first glimmer of wintry frost. Then he looked at Florentino Ariza, his invincible power, his intrepid love, and he was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits.
"And how long do you think we can keep up this goddamn coming and going?" he asked.
Florentino Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days and nights.
"Forever," he said.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD
COLLECTED STORIES
IN EVIL HOUR
INNOCENT ERENDIRA AND OTHER STORIES
LEAF STORM
LIVING TO TELL THE TALE
MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES
NEWS OF A KIDNAPPING
NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL
OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE
STRANGE PILGRIMS
THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH
THE GENERAL IN HIS LABYRINTH
THE STORY OF A SHIPWRECKED SAILOR
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD
'My favourite book by one of the world's greatest authors. You're in the hands of a master' Mariella Frostrup
'On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on ...'
When newly-wed Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman are left to their wedding night, Bayardo discovers that his new wife is no virgin. Disgusted, he returns Angela to her family home that very night, where her humiliated mother beats her savagely and her two brothers demand to know her violator, whom she names as Santiago Nasar.
As he wakes to thoughts of the previous night's revelry, Santiago is unaware of the slurs that have been cast against him. But with Angela's brothers set on avenging their family honour, soon the whole town knows who they plan to kill, where, when and why.
'A masterpiece' Evening Standard
'A work of high explosiveness - the proper stuff of Nobel prizes. An exceptional novel' The Times
'Brilliant writer, brilliant book' Guardian
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
COLLECTED STORIES
'The stories are rich and unsettling, confident and eloquent. They are magical' John Updike Sweeping through crumbling towns, travelling fairs and windswept ports, Gabriel Garcia Marquez introduces a host of extraordinary characters and communities in his mesmerising tales of everyday life: smugglers, bagpipers, the President and Pope at the funeral of Macondo's revered matriarch; a very old angel with enormous wings. Teeming with the magical oddities for which his novels are loved, Marquez's stories are a delight.
'These stories abound with love affairs, ruined beauty, and magical women. It is essence of Marquez' Guardian
'Of all the living authors known to me, only one is undoubtedly touched by genius: Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Sunday Telegraph
'Marquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no one else can do' Salman Rushdie
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
IN EVIL HOUR
'A masterly book' Guardian
'Cesar Montero was dreaming about elephants. He'd seen them at the movies on Sunday ...'
Only moments later, Cesar is led away by police as they clear the crowds away from the man he has just killed.
But Cesar is not the only man to be riled by the rumours being spread in his Colombian hometown - under the cover of darkness, someone creeps through the streets sticking malicious posters to walls and doors. Each night the respectable townsfolk retire to their beds fearful that they will be the subject of the following morning's lampoons.
As paranoia seeps through the town and the delicate veil of tranquility begins to slip, can the perpetrator be uncovered before accusation and violence leave the inhabitants' sanity in tatters?
'In Evil Hour was the book which was to inspire my own career as a novelist. I owe my writing voice to that one book!' Jim Crace 'Belongs to the very best of Marquez's work ... Should on no account be missed' Financial Times
'A splendid achievement' The Times
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
INNOCENT ERENDIRA AND OTHER STORIES
'These stories abound with love affairs, ruined beauty, and magical women. It is the essence of Marquez' Guardian
'Erendira was bathing her grandmother when the wind of misfortune began to blow ...'
Whilst her grotesque and demanding grandmother retires to bed, Erendira still has floors to wash, sheets to iron, and a peacock to feed. The never-ending chores leave the young girl so exhausted that she collapses into bed with the candle still glowing on a nearby table - and is fast asleep when it topples over ...
Eight hundred and seventy-two thousand, three hundred and fifteen pesos, her grandmother calculates, is the amount that Erendira must repay her for the loss of the house. As she is dragged by her grandmother from town to town and hawked to soldiers, smugglers and traders, Erendira feels herself dying. Can the love of a virgin save the young whore from her hell?
'It becomes more and more fun to read. It shows what "fabulous" really means' Time Out
'Marquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do' Salman Rushdie 'One of this century's most evocative writers' Anne Tyler
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
LEAF STORM
'Marquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do' Salman Rushdie 'Suddenly, as if a whirlwind had set down roots in the centre of the town, the banana company arrived, pursued by the leaf storm'
As a blizzard of warehouses and amusement parlours and slums descends on the small town of Macondo, the inhabitants reel at the accompanying stench of rubbish that makes their home unrecognizable. When the banana company leaves town as fast as it arrived, all they are left with is a void of decay.
Living in this devastated and soulless wasteland is one last honourable man, the Colonel, who is determined to fulfil a longstanding promise, no matter how unpalatable it may be. With the death of the detested Doctor, he must provide an honourable burial - and incur the wrath of the rest of Macondo, who would rather see the Doctor rot, forgotten and unattended.
'The most important writer of fiction in any language' Bill Clinton 'Marquez is a retailer of wonders' Sunday Times
'An exquisite writer, wise, compassionate, and extremely funny' Sunday Telegraph
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
LIVING TO TELL THE TALE
'A treasure trove, a discovery of a lost land
we knew existed but couldn't find. A thrilling miracle of a book' The Times
Living to Tell the Tale spans Gabriel Garcia Marquez's life from his birth in Colombia in 1927, through his emerging career as a writer, up to the 1950s and his proposal to the woman who would become his wife. Insightful, daring and beguiling in equal measure, it charts how Garcia Marquez's astonishing early life influenced the man who, more than any other, has been hailed as the twentieth century's greatest and most-beloved writer.
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES
'A velvety pleasure to read. Marquez has composed, with his usual sensual gravity and Olympian humour, a love letter to the dying light' John Updike 'The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself a gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin ...'
He has never married, never loved and never gone to bed with a woman he didn't pay. But on finding a young girl naked and asleep on the brothel owner's bed, a passion is ignited in his heart - and he feels, for the first time, the urgent pangs of love.
Each night, exhausted by her factory work, 'Delgadina' sleeps peacefully whilst he watches her quietly. During these solitary early hours, his love for her deepens and he finds himself reflecting on his newly found passion and the loveless life he had led. By day, his columns in the local newspaper are read avidly by those who recognize in his outpourings the enlivening and transformative power of love.
'Marquez describes this amorous, sometimes disturbing journey with the grace and vigour of a master storyteller' Daily Mail
'There is not one stale sentence, redundant word, or unfinished thought' The Times
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
NEWS OF A KIDNAPPING
'A story only a writer of Marquez's stature could tell so brilliantly' Mail on Sunday
'She looked over her should before getting into the car to be sure no one was following her ...'
Pablo Escobar: billionaire drugs baron; ruthless manipulator, brutal killer and jefe of the infamous Medellin cartel. A man whose importance in the international drug trade and renown for his charitable work among the poor brought him influence and power in his home country of Colombia, and the unwanted attention of the American courts.
Terrified of the new Colombian President's determination to extradite him to America, Escobar found the best bargaining tools he could find: hostages.
In the winter of 1990, ten relatives of Colombian politicians, mostly women, were abducted and held hostage as Escobar attempted to strong-arm the government into blocking his extradition. Two died, the rest survived, and from their harrowing stories Marquez retells, with vivid clarity, the terror and uncertainty of those dark and volatile months.
'Reads with an urgency which belongs to the finest fiction. I have never read anything which gave me a better sense of the way Colombia was in its worst times' Daily Telegraph
'A piece of remarkable investigative journalism made all the more brilliant by the author's talent for magical storytelling' Financial Times
'Compellingly readable' Sunday Times
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL
'An imaginative writer of genius, the topmost pinnacle of an entire generation of Latin American novelists of cathedral-like proportions' Guardian
In a decaying Colombian town the Colonel and his sick wife are living from day to day, scraping together funds for food and medicine. Each Friday the Colonel waits for a letter to come in the post, hoping for the pension he is owed that will change their lives. While he waits the Colonel puts his hopes in his rooster - a prize bird that will make him money when cockfighting comes into season. But until then the bird - like the Colonel and his ailing wife - must somehow be fed ...
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS
'Superb and intensely readable' Time Out
'An ash-gray dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst onto the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday of December ...'
When a witch doctor appears on the doorstep of the Marquis de Casalduero prophesizing a plague of rabies in their Colombian seaport, he dismisses her claims - until, that is, he hears that his young daughter, Sierva Maria, was one of four people bitten by a rabid dog, and the only one to survive.
Sierva Maria appears completely unscathed - but as rumours of the plague spread, the Marquis and his wife wonder at her continuing good health. In a town consumed by superstition, it's not long before they, and everyone else, put her survival down to a demonic possession and begin to see her supernatural powers as the cause of the town's woes. Only the young priest charged with exorcising the evil spirit recognizes the girl's sanity, but can he convince the town that it's not her that needs healing?
'Brilliantly moving. A tour de force' A.S. Byatt 'A compassionate, witty and unforgettable masterpiece' Daily Telegraph
'At once nostalgic and satiric, a resplendent fable' Sunday Times
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE
'The greatest novel in any language of the last 50 years. Marquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do' Salman Rushdie 'Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice ...'
Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly founded village where Jose Arcadio Buendia and his strong-willed wife, Ursula, have started their new life. As the mysterious Melquiades excites Aureliano Buendia's father with new inventions and tales of adventure, neither can know the significance of the indecipherable manuscript that the old gypsy passes into their hands.
Through plagues of insomnia, civil war, hauntings and vendettas, the many tribulations of the Buendia household push memories of the manuscript aside. Few remember its existence and only one will discover the hidden message that it holds...
'Should be required reading for the entire human race' New York Times
'No lover of fiction can fail to respond to the grace of Marquez's writing' Sunday Telegraph
'It's the most magical book I have ever read. I think Marquez has influenced the world' Carolina Herrera
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
STRANGE PILGRIMS
'Filled with greedy joys, with small pleasures, polished like apples against a sleeve' Observer
'The first thing Senora Prudencia Linero noticed when she reached the port of Naples was that it had the same smell as the port of Riohacha ...'
Their distant, nostalgic memories of home, their sense of anonymity in a foreign land, the terrifying pang of vulnerability they feel as they step over the threshold into an alien world ...
Marquez's strange pilgrims - the ageing prostitute preparing for death by teaching her dog to weep at her grave, the panicked husband scared for the life of his injured wife, the old man who allows his mind to wander on a long-haul flight from Paris - experience with all his humour, warmth and colour, what it is to be a Latin American adrift in Europe or, indeed, any outsider living far from home.
'Celebratory and full of strange relish at life's oddness. The stories draw their strength from Marquez's generous feel for character, good and bad, boorish and innocent' William Boyd 'The most important writer of fiction in any language' Bill Clinton
'Often touching, often funny, always unexpected, the experience is as enriching as travel itself' New Statesman
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH
'It asks to be read more than twice, and the rewards are dazzling' Observer
'Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping o
f their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside ...'
As the citizens of an unnamed Caribbean nation creep through dusty corridors in search of their tyrannical leader, they cannot comprehend that the frail and withered man laying dead on the floor can be the self-styled General of the Universe. Their egocentric, maniacally violent leader, known for serving up traitors to dinner guests and drowning young children at sea, can surely not die the humiliating death of a mere mortal?
Tracing the demands of a man whose egocentric excesses mask the loneliness of isolation and whose lies have become so ingrained that they are indistinguishable from truth, Marquez has created a fantastical portrait of despotism that rings with an air of reality.
'Delights with its quirky humanity and black humour and impresses by its total originality' Vogue
'Captures perfectly the moral squalor and political paralysis that enshrouds a society awaiting the death of a long-term dictator' Guardian
'Marquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do' Salman Rushdie
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GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ