The General in His Labyrinth
June 9: he leaves Bucaramanga with the idea of going to Venezuela. He intends to live on the estate at Anauco owned by the Marquis del Toro.
June 11: the Ocana Convention is dissolved.
June 24: his plans changed, he returns to Bogota, to great acclaim.
July 15: in a proclamation issued in Valencia, Paez calls Bolivar "the singular genius of the nineteenth century ... the man who for eighteen years has suffered sacrifice after sacrifice for your happiness, and has made the greatest one that could be demanded of his heart: the supreme command that he has renounced a thousand times, but which in the present state of the Republic he is obliged to exercise."
August 27: the decree of institutional dictatorship, imposed as a result of the rivalries at the Ocana Convention. Bolivar abolishes the vice-presidency, thereby eliminating Santander from the government. The Liberator offers him the post of Colombian Ambassador to the United States. Santander accepts, but defers the trip for a period of time. It is possible that the elimination of Santander's office has an influence on the assassination attempt against Bolivar.
September 21: Paez recognizes Bolivar as supreme commander and swears, before Archbishop Ramon Ignacio Mendez and a crowd gathered in the Plaza Mayor of Caracas: "... and I promise under oath to obey, keep, and execute the decrees issued as laws of the Republic. Heaven, which is witness to my oath, will reward the fidelity with which I keep my promise."
September 25: an assassination attempt against Bolivar in Bogota. Manuelita Saenz saves him. Santander is among those implicated. Urdaneta, as judge at the trial, condemns him to death. Bolivar commutes the death penalty to exile.
1829 January 1: in Purificacion. His presence in Ecuador is necessary because of conflicts with Peru, which has occupied Guayaquil.
July 21: Colombia regains Guayaquil. The people welcome The Liberator in triumph.
September 13: he writes to O'Leary: "We all know that the reunification of New Granada and Venezuela is bound only by my authority, which must disappear now or later, whenever Providence or men so desire ..."
September 13: letter from Paez: "I have ordered the publication of a circular inviting all citizens and associations to express their opinions formally and solemnly. Now you can legally urge that the public say whatever it wishes. The point has been reached whereby Venezuela speaks with no concern other than the general welfare. If radical means are adopted for saying what all of you really desire, the reforms will be perfect and the will of the public will be done ..."
October 20: he returns to Quito.
October 29: he leaves for Bogota.
December 5: from Popayan he writes to Juan Jose Flores: "General Sucre will probably be my successor, and it is also probable that all of us will support him; for my part I offer to do so with all my heart and soul."
December 15: he indicates to Paez that he will not accept the presidency of the Republic again and that if the Congress elects Paez President of Colombia, he swears to him on his honor that he will obey his orders with the greatest pleasure.
December 18: he categorically disapproves the plan for a monarchy in Colombia.
1830 January 15: once again in Bogota.
January 20: the Congress of Colombia convenes. A message from Bolivar: he presents his renunciation of the presidency.
January 27: he requests permission from Congress to go to Venezuela. The Congress of Colombia denies him permission.
March 1: he hands over power to Domingo Caicedo, president of the Council of Government, and retires to Fucha.
April 27: in a message to the Admirable Congress he reiterates his decision not to continue in the presidency.
May 4: Joaquin Mosquera is elected President of Colombia.
May 8: Bolivar leaves Bogota to meet his final destiny.
June 4: Sucre is assassinated in Berruecos. Bolivar learns of it on July 1, at the foot of La Popa Hill, and is profoundly shaken.
September 5: Urdaneta takes over the government of Colombia in the face of an evident lack of civil authority. In Bogota, Cartagena, and other cities in New Granada there are demonstrations and pronouncements in favor of The Liberator's return to power. Urdaneta, in the meantime, waits for him.
September 18: on learning of the events that placed Urdaneta at the head of the government, he offers himself as citizen and soldier to defend the integrity of the Republic, and he announces that he will march to Bogota at the head of two thousand men to uphold the existing government; he rejects in part the request that he take power, stating that he would be considered a usurper, but he leaves open the possibility that in the next elections, "... legitimacy will shelter me or there will be a new President ..."; finally, he asks his compatriots to unite around Urdaneta's government.
October 2: in Turbaco.
October 15: in Soledad.
November 8: in Barranquilla.
December 1: he arrives prostrate in Santa Marta.
December 6: he goes to the plantation at San Pedro Alejandrino that belongs to the Spaniard Don Joaquin de Mier.
December 10: he dictates his last will and testament. When the physician insists that he confess and receive the sacraments, Bolivar says: "What does this mean? ... Can I be so ill that you talk to me of wills and confession? ... How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!"
December 17: he dies on the plantation at San Pedro Alejandrino in the company of a very few friends.
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
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA 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 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
'Mar
quez 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
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
'An amazing celebration of the many kinds of love between men and women' The Times
'It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love ...'
Fifty-one years, nine months and four days have passed since Fermina Daza rebuffed hopeless romantic Florentino Ariza's impassioned advances and married Dr. Juvenal Urbino instead. During that half century, Florentino has fallen into the arms of many delighted women, but has loved none but Fermina. Having sworn his eternal love to her, he lives for the day when he can court her again.
When Fermina's husband is killed trying to retrieve his pet parrot from a mango tree, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find new life in the twilight of their lives?
'A love story of astonishing power and delicious comedy' Newsweek
'A delight' Melvyn Bragg
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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?