Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez · first published 2000
54% recommend38% neutral8% critical
Why HN recommends it
A magical realist family saga written in a dense, poetic style that reads like song. It appears on lists of 20th-century novels and is held up as a standard work of Latin American fiction.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…Diaries". Nice if you like to fantasize about buying pieces for your spaceship in a shopping centre or think about chair-like aliens with 11 different sexes (in the book). Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "A hundred years of solitude". The book is all about "realismo fantástico", joining the real and imaginary words in an unforgettable blend.
on “Ask HN: What are some great books that are relatively unknown in the US?” ↗Don Quixote de la Mancha - M. de Cervantes Saavedra A hundred years of Solitude - G. G. Márquez Foucault's Pendulum - U. Eco Cryptonomicon - N. Stephenson The Dispossessed - U. K. Le Guin
on “Ask HN: Which book would you pick to re-read for the rest of your life?” ↗No Sartre or Camous? No Hundred Years of Solitude? No Pamuk? No Henry Miller? No Nabokov's "Dar", no "Ishmael", no " Stepenwolf", no "Dorian Gray", no "Brave New World"? No "mockingbird", no "Atlas", no motorcycle maintenance? No dr.Zhivago? What kind…
on “David Bowie’s Top 100 Books (2013)” ↗Dude go to half priced books or your local secondhand bookstore and just clean house. Classics in particular are a dime a dozen. Here's a list of "classics" to give you some ideas: * A Hundred Years of Solitude * Crime and Punishment * East of Eden * Moby Dick * Shakespeare's collected works * Bible, Koran, etc - keep as many sacred tomes as you can * Plato's Republic, maybe some other philosophy classics…
on “Ask HN: You've got $300 to fill an empty library. What do you choose?” ↗…harsh and cleverly concealed too! My observation was lost in translation. I have nothing against Africa. I read Achebe and consider Things Fall Apart to be one of the best books I have read along with Hundred Years of Solitude.
on “Chinua Achebe, African Literary Titan, Dies at 82 (2013)” ↗His writing was like poetry and song, all in one. Second best opening after "A Hundred Years of Solitude": "It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried…
on “Gabriel García Márquez, Literary Pioneer, Dies at 87” ↗- Siddhartha - Demian - A Brave New World - 1984 - A hundred years of solitude, although, I read it in Spanish and I don't know if it'll be as impactful with less cultural shared context I remember being forced to read it in class, and being completely repulsed by it, then, during…
on “Ask HN: What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?” ↗…West's The Fountain Overflows, a novel in the similar genre (but with a younger protagonist) that's known much less than it deserves. Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo. If you read and liked Garcia Marquez's A Hundred Years of Solitude, this one is shorter, darker, involves many more dead people, and you may want to give it a try. Alfred Hayes, In Love. A story of a man obsessed by love in a mid-century NYC. Unexpectedly touching,…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?” ↗…Hollywood movie "The Gangs All here." Youtube it if you want some entertainment. This largely put an innocuous public image on their immoral business practices. "The Banana Company" in Gabriel Garcia's "Hundred Years of Solitude" is also an allusion to the United Fruit Company. I can recommend this read on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Bananas-United-Fruit-Company-Shaped/d...
on “The Miracle of the Modern Banana” ↗Well this is awesome for me; I’ve been studying Spanish for a few years, and want to read fiction, but jeez, A Hundred Years of Solitude sure is difficult. I love SF and generally want to read works original in the language. We’ll see how the genre pans out, but regardless, I’m happy with those offerings that debut in Spanish.
on “The Uprising of Mesopunk Books: A Subgenre Guide” ↗Hoping a native Spanish speaker can add to this. I don't like YA-style books, and would love to know if there's a quality sci-fi or fantasy with prose like A Hundred Years of Solitude (like Lord of the Rings does for English)
on “The Uprising of Mesopunk Books: A Subgenre Guide” ↗> I’ve been studying Spanish for a few years, and want to read fiction, but jeez, A Hundred Years of Solitude sure is difficult. Well, sure. Get a book with a plot.
on “The Uprising of Mesopunk Books: A Subgenre Guide” ↗…world-famous and well-off if your book becomes a basis of a movie, or ideally several; see e.g. Harry Potter or The Song of Fire and Ice. Granted, they not a completely realistic, but neither is Moby-Dick, or Hundred Years of Solitude, or, say, Don Quixote, which basically started the whole "novel" thing.
on “Your Novel Should Be More Like Moby-Dick” ↗