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Consider this a whistle stop tour of an author everyone should explore during their university days: Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Columbian born author is the winner of the Nobel Prize and is best known for his image-laden ‘Magic Realism’ that makes you feel the heat and the passion of his native South America.
1. Love in the Time of Cholera – This is Marquez’s classic, also made into a fantastic film starring Javier Bardem. But we’re here for the novel. Florentino spends his entire life with his heart dedicated to one woman, Fermina. His body, on the other hand, he dedicates to 622 women and a successful career in the pursuit of being an experienced and masterful lover once he can finally have Fermina. This book is the perfect expression of having your heart broken, but also living in hope. It constantly treads the line between comedic gold and lovelorn tragedy. Upon the first reading you’ll realize it’s a classic.
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude – This work is considered by the critics to be the development of Marquez’s ‘Magic Realist’ style, which made the author a star. However, for readers what you will get out of this novel is a rich telling of family history that pulls you into the inner workings of the Buendia family life. Philosophical, magical, and endlessly enjoyable, this is the Marquez text that will invoke multiple readings.
3. Chronicle of a Death Foretold – Here is a slim volume, more novella than novel, which really, REALLY should be read in one sitting. The plot is pithy and simple: Santiago Nasar is shot the day after a very important wedding in the town. Who did it and why? What unfolds is richer in plot and subtext than a 700-page novel. Marquez so successfully captures the small town mentality (owing to his own upbringing) and translates it onto the page for all of his international readers.
4. Memories of My Melancholy Whores – This might not be the most relatable of stories. It tells the tale of a 90-year-old Columbian journalist who wants to purchase a virgin for his birthday. But once again, Marquez proves that this is an engrossing love story as Love in the Time of Cholera. A more recent work of the author, the weightiness of life experience comes across so clearly in the writing, infused with the Latin humor we know so well of Marquez’s work.
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