Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude

One of the most influential literary works of our time, One Hundred Years of Solitude, remains a dazzling achievement by the masterful Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel is considered the defining example of magical realism. In this course, we follow the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through seven generations of the Buendía family. Through guided discussions, we examine how Márquez weaves "marvelous and impossible events" into a realistic narrative, creating a fictional world marked by a strong presence of the unusual and the fantastic. We analyze the novel’s rejection of linear progression in favor of cyclical time, in which history repeats and the past is ever-present. And we learn to let go of conventional plot expectations and scientific reason to uncover what Márquez reveals about life’s hidden meanings. Suggested book: One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Novel by Gabriel García Márquez.