If you are one of the people reading One Hundred Years of Solitude this summer, you might be interested in this article by Ilan Stavans, about the importance of OHYOS and the influence of Gabriel Garcia Marquez:
García Márquez, however, is its acknowledged fountainhead, and for good reason. At the beginning of One Hundred Years of Solitude,
Macondo is a small, nondescript town on the Caribbean coast of Colombia
(modeled after García Márquez's birthplace, Aracataca which, 40 years
after the novel's debut, is still a dusty place without running water).
In 20 symmetrical chapters, each made of approximately 20 dense pages,
a third-person narrator — is it Melquíades the Gypsy? — chronicles,
with frightening precision, the town's rise and fall, exploring its
geographical, temporal, ideological, and cultural dimensions. In spite
of the title, the narrative time spans more than a century.
