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For more details on Garcia Marquez, visit the website run by "The Great Quail" at http://rpg.net/quail/libyrinth/gabo/.
Garcia Marquez's 1975 novel, El otoño del patriarca (translated in 1977 as The Autumn of the Patriarch), builds on his studies of Francisco Franco, the dictator of Spain. This work further explores themes of power and isolation. The novel is technically brilliant and is often described as a prose poem.
Demonstrating his admiration for Daniel Defoe's 1722 work, A Journal of the Plague Year, Garcia Marquez elaborates on the story of his parents' marriage in his 1985 novel, El amor en los tiempos del cólera (translated in 1988 as Love in the Time of Cholera).
The 1968 collection of Garcia Marquez's stories, No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories, includes themes and ideas that were later developed in One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Miguel Angel Asturias, a 1967 Nobel Prize winner from Guatemala, wrote a trilogy about the United Fruit Company, focusing on the exploitation of Indigenous people on banana plantations. The English titles of these novels are The Cyclone (1950), The Green Pope (1954), and The Eyes of the Interred (1960).
Carlos Fuentes, a Mexican novelist, critic, and friend of Garcia Marquez, wrote the 1975 novel Terra Nostra. This work has been compared to One Hundred Years of Solitude in several ways: both use New World chronicles and their language concerning the Spanish Conquest, and both employ the figure of the historian or archive. However, Fuentes uses Miguel de Cervantes, the greatest Spanish writer and author of Don Quixote, instead of a gypsy.
No exploration of Latin American literature is complete without mentioning Canto General (General Song, 1950) by Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda. This collection includes the poem "La United Fruit Co."
The character Melquiades is often seen as a representation of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. A master storyteller in the magic realism genre and director of the Argentine national library, Borges, like Melquiades, was a disseminator of knowledge. Several of Borges's stories share similarities with the character Aureliano (IV). For instance, in "The Aleph" from The Aleph and Other Stories (1970), Aureliano's vision of history is instantaneous.
The term "magic realism" was first applied to the new Latin American literature by Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier in the late 1940s. His masterpiece, The Lost Steps (1953), defines Latin American reality as a fusion of primeval myth, Indigenous stories, and the imposition of Spanish civilization. This cultural blending makes the fantastic yet believable elements of magic realism possible.
Another notable magic realist is Chilean author Isabel Allende, best known for her 1982 novel The House of Spirits. As the niece of assassinated Chilean President Salvador Allende, she offers a candid examination of South American political realities and the role of women within that context.
Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian magic realist, narrates the tale of a prophet who sparks a rebellion among the people of Brazil in "The War of the End of the World" (1981). Under the prophet's guidance, they establish the city of Canudos, where conventional history and civilization are upended—there is no money, taxation, or private property. It represents a complete revolution.
In "Like Water for Chocolate" (1989), Mexican author Laura Esquivel offers her take on magic realism. Set in Mexico, the story revolves around a daughter fated to remain at home to care for her mother. Her lover marries her sister to stay close to her, leading to a dramatic and passionate tragedy.
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