Customer Reviews

Cien anos de soledad / One Hundred Years of Solitude (Neuva Austral Series) (Spanish Edition)

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Para ser franco, en realidad no soy muy buen crítico de libros ni mucho menos. Simplemente estoy de acuerdo con muchas de las personas que catalogan a esta novela como una obra cumbre de la literatura hispana. He leído tres veces este libro y debo confesar que cada vez me ha interesado más, me ha atrapado más. En conclusión: esta obra se ha convertido en mi biblia. La recomiendo para todos aquellos lectores que se consideren dignos de leer un libro que es más que una novela; es una gran historia que yo considero muy real y explico el porque: analizando muchas notas periodísticas realizadas a su autor e investigando sobre la vida del mismo, uno puede notar las "coincidencias" que hay entre las historias de cada personaje y la historia del mismo García Márquez y todo su entorno (su pueblo, su familia). Además, realizando estas investigaciones, me encontré con la siguiente declaración de la esposa de "Gabo": "cuando estaba escribiendo 'Cien años de soledad', y llegado el momento de la muerte del Coronel Aureliano Buendía, para poder escribirla pasó una semana de muy mal humor, encerrado en su escritorio. Sólo bajaba para cenar. Hasta que un día me enfrentó y con profunda tristeza me dijo 'ya lo maté'". Se nota en esta declaración que es tan profunda la relación entre el escritor y los personajes que para aquella persona que conoce esta historia, les puedo asegurar que le apasiona mucho más la lectura de este libro.

I'm not the smartest man on the block, but I consider myself to be fairly well-read. Usually, when I finish a novel I think about it for a brief while and then look for my next book to read.
CIEN ANOS DE SOLEDAD was a novel that when I finished reading it (I read it in Spanish) I automatically began with page one.
It is one of the most enthralling, awe-inspiring novels that I've ever read. Garcia Márquez es un genio.
READ THIS NOVEL! (You may even want to read it twice).

(Leete esta novela, que bien vale la pena. Es impresionante e inolvidable.)

Quien dice que Cien años de soledad no es más que realismo mágico, tiene una visión muy restringida de la literatura. Es una épica, la historia de la humanidad, una historia que atrapa al lector desde la primer línea. La novela que terminó con el regionalismo y refleja siempre a la sociedad latinoamericana como un todo, influida por el mundo capitalista estadounidense. Un libro en el que un inventor fracasado, un coronel antiheroico, una madre de familia resignada y demás personajes estereotipados del mundo actual forman parte de la realidad de la que el autor hace burla, a tal grado de sentir compasión por sus propios personajes, por la suma de esfuerzos siempre inútlies por hacer bien las cosas, a causa de la falta de amor, a la que se hace referencia durante toda la novela. El personaje principal es Macondo, el pueblo mismo, que sobrevive al olvido por cien años de fracasos personales y acontecimientos fantásticos, para finalmente desaparecer sin rastro alguno, al igual que toda su historia. Excelente novela, es EL libro, narrado con el excelente lenguage poético tan propio de GGM.

No cabe duda que en Cien años de Soledad, nuestra imaginacion se pone a jugar con el tiempo, los colores, olores, sensaciones, personajes y lugares, pero leyendo entre lineas, escudriñando entre las palabras, no solo se encuentra la magia caracteristica de la cultura latinoamericana, sino tambien su tragedia social y politica: la tirania, la dictadura, el liderazgo populista, la alienacion y perdida de lo nuestro a traves del tiempo, la soledad. Si se mantiene la mente alerta y se tiene una intensa suspicacia, Cien años de Soledad ofrece mas de lo que aparenta ofrecer. Se descubra lo que se descubra en ella, esta es una obra que una vez leida dificilmente se olvida.

Cien años de soledad es probablemente la mejor obra que haya escrito Garcia Marquez o cualquier otro escritor latinoamericano hasta ahora. Esta escrita con un riquísimo lexico, las descripciones del ambiente alrededor, de las diversas situaciones que enfrentan los personajes, y la increíble cantidad de detalles sobre estos y sus vidas, hacen de este libro un indiscutible merecedor del Premio Nobel que ganó. Si no has leído este libro, leelo, ya que el sólo hacerlo es una experiencia inolvidable.

I'm writing this review in English because my Spanish is bad. I picked this book up for many reasons. But there's 2 main reasons why I picked it up in Spanish: It's the language in which it was written and I wanted to brush up on my spanish. Little did I know however, that I was reading the BEST book that I have ever read. One thing people gotta understand about this book is that it was written a long time ago... ~40years ago? Something like that. And so, a lot of the ideas presented in the book have been duplicated since then. And if you know them, it might subtract from the magic the book provides.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez can't possibly be human, this is a true masterpiece. I highly recommend for people that know a little spanish or more, to read this book as there are some words and sentences that may be lost in translation.

If you are going to read only one book in Spanish this year, Cien años de Soledad is it. But beware of this particular edition. It has footnotes. Not illuminating notes. Not guiding notes. Not explanatory notes. Just dumb, distracting, unneeded, unasked for notes. If you can avoid reading them, great. I, for one, can't avoid looking at the footnotes, and in this case, the pleasure of reading an insanely great novel sours into the anger of being interrupted with subnormal comments (do you need to be reminded of a phrase that appears a few lines before?), long-winded diversions (do you really need the definition of the Real Academia Española to understand what is a Yuca?) or truly gratuitous opinions of the editor, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme. I am lucky the book I bought also had some imperfections in the cover, so I had a formal reason to return it. Now I am buying another edition, free of footnotes. It will be a bit more expensive, but I know, because I've read the book many times, that an unobstructed reading of Cien Anos de Soledad is worth it.

This is possibly the best novel ever written in the Spanish language, together with Don Quijote de la Mancha. If you want to read something great, this novel is a must.

I have read Cien Anos before and loved it. However, this edition provided me with information that I completely missed from my first reading. There are way too many details in the story and the footnotes pointed out all of them. Some, I agree, are less important, but most of them help the reader understand the complex and fascinating matrix of lives of this fantastic book.

I first read this book in the 'sixties, when it came out. I lived in Colombia then. It would still be a few years before anyone in the world outside would read it in translation.

Since then, living in other places far from Colombia, I have re-read it several times, both in translation and in the original. In English, it comes across as a very, very odd story, much in same the way Colombia can strike visitors as an elusive, enigmatic place. But in Spanish, the book evokes the sounds and smells of Colombia so powerfully, that you have the sensation of actually being there, alongside the Magdalena River.

No translation can ever capture that quality. The power of a great storyteller's art is there in other languages, but not Colombia's innermost soul. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, a friend of Garcia Marquez's, who wrote a biographical sketch of him, had that in mind when he entitled it "El olor de la guayaba," i.e. the smell of fallen fruit beginning to rot. Mendoza, also a Colombian, although from a completely different part of the country, may have been too closely touched to be able to talk about it. In any event he does not, the title notwithstanding.

In the 'eighties I lived in Spain, and every Wednesday a major newspaper there had a column by the by-then-world-famous Nobel laureate, who lived in Barcelona. Half his columns were about politics, and forgettable. But the other half, which were about everything else, fairly shimmered with inspiration.

Gabo has written a lot in his life, but hands down the best of it, and the distilled essence of all of it, is in that one novel. Once you read it, you'll never again be able to look at yellow butterflies, mariposas amarillas, without seeing ghosts.