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The Autumn of the Patriarch

3.81 of 5 stars 3.81 · rating details · 6,397 ratings · 278 reviews

One of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most intricate and ambitious works, The Autumn of the Patriarch is a brilliant tale of a Caribbean tyrant and the corruption of power.

From charity to deceit, benevolence to violence, fear of God to extreme cruelty, the dictator of The Autumn of the Patriarch embodies the best and the worst of human nature. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the renowne...more

Paperback, 280 pages

Published March 14th 2006 by Harper Perennial Modern Classics (first published 1975)

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Jul 13, 2012 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2010)

Shelves: latin-american, 1001-core, political, challenging, magical-realism, nobel, violence

Hypnotic and brilliant.

This is my fourth Garcia Marquez book and this is said to be his most difficult book to read. It took him four (1968-1971) years to write this book. Four years. He wrote this as a follow up novel to his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude that catapulted him to stardom in the world literary arena. This was his most recent novel when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

I picked this 1001 book because there was a new member in our book club who is also a GGM...more

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Nov 13, 2008 Nicholas rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Maintaining lucidity is a central challenge for both audience and protagonist in the dizzying and illusory narrative of Marquez's Autumn of the Patriarch. While its easy to dwell on the uncompromising style of a novel devoid of paragraphs, punctuation, and quotations delineating dialogue, such blurry tactics seal the bizarre entrancement of a novel concerned with the solitude of a bastard patriarch. Certainly it's no easy pie being tossed randomly into an unspecified Caribbean climate and period...more Maintaining lucidity is a central challenge for both audience and protagonist in the dizzying and illusory narrative of Marquez's Autumn of the Patriarch. While its easy to dwell on the uncompromising style of a novel devoid of paragraphs, punctuation, and quotations delineating dialogue, such blurry tactics seal the bizarre entrancement of a novel concerned with the solitude of a bastard patriarch. Certainly it's no easy pie being tossed randomly into an unspecified Caribbean climate and period, but for those readers willing to tunnel into the narrative, a luscious comfort settles in and Marquez's familiar descriptive and story-telling abilities begin to sparkle.

In the words of the author: "my most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separates what's real from what's fantastic," of which he succeeded marvelously. Time periods shift in mid sentence, making it difficult to establish an objective point of reference between past and present, transitioning from narrative voice into undifferentiated dialogue in an endless stream of dreamlike storytelling. An eccentric and daunting cast of scheming subordinates, presidential impostors, deceptive right-hand men, fine-tailored assassins, foreign dignitaries, and erstwhile nun love interests litter the storyline in the endless shifting between invisible arrangements of power.

But what's so redeeming about all of this, the disorienting prose and the frequent descriptive escapades, is the substantive exploration of power and illusion lying underneath it all. What is power if not a perception? An artifice exercised through others' mutual perception? Marquez underscores this artfully and brilliantly in his use of magical realism, heaving his readers into the same boat of illusions as his characters. One wavers like the throngs of peasants outside the general's palace, questioning his power -even his existence- one moment, exalting in it and praying for him days later. It's a calm delirium everyone gets used to. After all, don't we all, in various self-serving ways and forms, blamelessly submit to and exert control over one another? Marquez does not limit his comment to just those in positions of ultimate authority. There is a kind of symbiosis existing in the compatible illusions maintained across and between the layers of Caribbean society; between the general and his officers' fealty, the public and their expectations of royal power, between the general and his own position of authority, all transpiring unspoken and intimately connected. It all starts to feel so patently absurd as the novel spirals tighter and tighter into itself. You are left feeling the distant despair of life as some ridiculously orchestrated illusion, like an elephant floating by a balloon string, maintained by the inexplicable conviction that if we all pretend it floats, it really must.

It's easy to condemn the despicable and senseless acts governing the conscience of such a corrupt, festering patriarch, hell bent on perpetuating his appearance at all costs. Yet Marquez's careful attention to nuance while exploring the psyche of supreme power inspires a kind of sympathetic melancholy meditation of sorts, while simultaneously constituting a scathing, mocking indictment. Ultimately the illusion of power, or lack thereof, becomes all-reaching and unintelligible, even swallowing up the emperor himself. In his abject loneliness, pity replaces envy, power feels like a pestilent disease, and one is left with the conclusion that wherever happiness or a meaningful life may lie, the hierarchies of power afford little direction.
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Jul 26, 2008 jess rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: ryan golden

Recommended to jess by: me!

on the whole, the novel is impressive. i can't imagine what it took for him to write this whole thing the way that he did. most of the sentences run for ten pages, moving from one point-of-view to another without warning, from dreams to real-life (maybe?)action. at the beginning of each chapter, we are reminded that the patriarch of the novel's title is dead, but we are quickly taken back to years before his death and pushed through memories of the years leading up to his first fake and then rea...more on the whole, the novel is impressive. i can't imagine what it took for him to write this whole thing the way that he did. most of the sentences run for ten pages, moving from one point-of-view to another without warning, from dreams to real-life (maybe?)action. at the beginning of each chapter, we are reminded that the patriarch of the novel's title is dead, but we are quickly taken back to years before his death and pushed through memories of the years leading up to his first fake and then real death. it certainly makes your head spin, and it's difficult to read less than 40 pages at a time without completely losing track of what the hell is going on.

his technique of using one event as the touchstone from which he begins each section of the book, in this one the death of the patriarch, is common for marquez, but this stream-of-consciousness style of writing is not. what makes it more intriguing is how any given sentence switches from the 1st- to the 3rd-person point-of-view, and is usually delivered by at least 3 different characters. factor in that the characters telling the story are sometimes extremely minor and therefore hard to keep track of and you become quite dizzy.

all of this said, however, the style works with the subject matter. the main character doubles as both protagonist and antagonist, and marquez does such a good job of winning the reader's sympathy for him that by the time he is filling a crate full of children with concrete in order to more easily dispose of them in the ocean, we have forgotten that he is a monster, that we hate him. the narrative style makes it clear that marquez does this on purpose. knowing what is known about him politically (he has infamously opposed numerous latin american leaders throughout history) combined with what is known about him as a deeply romantic humanitarian, all of this makes sense. his dictator is painted on one hand as horrific, maniacal, and frighteningly self-absorbed and on the other hand as troubled, insecure, and confused by his own power.

i struggled with this one, in part because it didn't do what his other books do for me. approaching it with that expectation was a bad idea, though. i usually read "100 years of solitude" every summer, and i have found marquez to be a perfect travel companion, particularly if i'm going into mexico; his stories are always dreamlike with such a strong dose of reality added to the characters and relationships that i enjoy his books the same way i enjoy a good drug experience. this story was not a comment on human relationships, however, as much as it was on the nature of leadership and the vulnerability of those being lead. all in all, i'd say it's definitely worth picking up, but be sure you've got some time to commit to digesting it properly. (less)

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Steve The only other one I ever read by GM was Love in the Time of Cholera, which I thought was so-so, and is pretty pale when compared to Autumn of the P....more
Aug 02, 2008 10:20am

jess interesting digression:

"The reader may have noted that among those despots to the south who served as the author's models, two are conspicuously missi...more
Aug 03, 2008 10:25am

Nov 18, 2008 Jessica is currently reading it

If ever a book a stumped my rhythm, this one takes the prize. It is written as one fluid thought, one ranting narrative, sans paragraphs, with sentences that rival even St. Paul's run-ons.

It's racy, delusional, oh so very violent (in language, sex, war, illness, execution, thought, etc.), and even comical at times. Each time I laugh, I feel a tinge of guilt - like the uncontrollable snicker at a disabled person tripping over their untied shoelaces into a puddle of water.

I've decided that it's b...more

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Jul 08, 2007 Ian rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone

It took Garcia seven years to write this book. Seven years. I guess that's how long it takes to make sure fifty-page chapters are turned into one paragraph and as few sentences as possible. But the effect is to make the entire book run together and make each story within the story melt into the ones around it. The consequence is ending the reader's sense of chronology, timeline, and even details. We are only left with the horrible man - and leader - that was the patriarch.

And when the story abo...more

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Dec 07, 2007 Hena rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: latin-america

I finally finished it! Wow. This book is complete madness. It starts off with 40-page chapters and zero paragraph breaks, except between chapters, and half-a-page sentences, and by the end, the chapters are longer and the sentences are even longer with many many commas, so that by the end when one gets close to the end there are just no periods anymore. Whew! And you thought the preceding sentence was long. Oh, and the narrator changes a bunch ... and it's cyclical, going back and forth between...more

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Jan 25, 2008 Ariel Cruz rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Joe Momma.

Shelves: fiction

Very dreamlike and compelling. Don't be intimidated by the paragraphless format, the sparse punctuation or the constantly shifting prspective. That would certainly be a problem if applied by less capable hands then Marquez's, but in this case we're dealing with a narrative that is less discursive and then impressionistic. It's like hearing the collective thought of a whole town about one subject.

Remarkable. Probably the closest we'll see to oral story-telling in print form.

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Jan 03, 2012 Ben rated it 2 of 5 stars

While on a word by word level the language is often lyrical and inventive, this book suffers from overinflective prose and a sort of misleading vividness. What results is plot totally dominated by the character alluded to in title... an intentional fallacy often compounded with monotonous hyper-emphasis... I say intentional because the narration is simultaneously doing all sorts of stunts - changing person(s), refusing paragraph breaks, making asides - to draw attention to itself. In the end, I...more

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Dec 01, 2008 Bob rated it 5 of 5 stars

This story of the death of a dictator and his oppressive and secretive regime - the vultures are a clue that he's finally dead - is in many ways Marquez's most ambitious piece and a lot of people who like Marquez don't like this one at all. It is more dreamscape than narrative. Frustrating and disjointed, the story goes in and out of any rational context sometimes. Scenes repeat with minor twists from the first time you visited it. One sentence can go on for pages. Most of it rambles and collide...more

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Dec 13, 2008 Lamski Kikita rated it 5 of 5 stars

When you start this book you will be taken aback by the intensely strong language (both difficult AND vulgar) and the very very very long sentences which sometimes are as long as the whole chapter. But at the first page you are sure to be mesmerized by the beautiful prose and intense imagery, and the small details that just keep u pinned to your chair tasting fully every word.

The story of your typical Latin tyrant, but with a little twist in detail which makes him more of a criminal, pervert, lo...more When you start this book you will be taken aback by the intensely strong language (both difficult AND vulgar) and the very very very long sentences which sometimes are as long as the whole chapter. But at the first page you are sure to be mesmerized by the beautiful prose and intense imagery, and the small details that just keep u pinned to your chair tasting fully every word.

The story of your typical Latin tyrant, but with a little twist in detail which makes him more of a criminal, pervert, lover, legend, and well, human being. The general in Gabo's story rules for over 100 years during which he bombed children in the sea, received a daily sack of heads of his opponents, played dominoes with foreign dignitaries, faked his death, exiled the Church, molested school girls, lost his mother, his only wife, and his only son, and lost the sea.

Gabo certainly knows how to make you hate someone in one second and feel sorry for him the very next. The general had weird quirks like hiding honey in special places, looking at the sea a specific number of times a day, locking and bolting his bedroom door three times, writing small notes to remind himself of things and plugging them into the cracks in the wall, counting the cows and chickens, healing the lepers and invalid who live in his rosebushes, and well, of course sleeping around with any woman available regardless of his herniated testicle.

His long reign brought him from his utmost strength and cruelty to the humiliation of age and forgetfulness, a somewhat karma-driven chain of events since the deal of his mother with mites coming out of her back, his only wife and son eaten by trained dogs, and the Caribbean being taken by the "gringos" right under his nose.

Favorite Quotes:

"..he had them take the children out of their hiding place in the jungle and carry them off in the opposite direction to the provinces of
perpetual rain where there were no treasonous winds to spread their voices, where the animals of the earth rotted away as they walked and lilies grew on words and octopuses swam among the trees"

"So they took away the Caribbean in April, Ambassador Ewing's nautical engineers carried it off in numbered pieces to plant it far from the hurricanes in the blood-red dawns of Arizona, they took it away with everything it had inside, general sir, with the reflection of our cities, our timid drowned people, our demented dragons"(less)

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Aug 31, 2012 Booknblues rated it 4 of 5 stars

I decided to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's stunning book The Autumn of the Patriarch after reading Didion's Salvador because of her claim that it was based on former Salvadoran president General Maximiliano Hernedez Martinez. In actuality it is a composite of several dictators including Spain's Franco.

While the patriarch is a composite of all he is really none. He is a mythological creature who lives to near eternity and rules the country for over one hundred years. This however is not a plot ba...more

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Apr 27, 2012 Cristian Mihai rated it 4 of 5 stars

For those who enjoy Magical Realism, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the biggest names out there. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, Marques is one of the best stylists of this century. His prose is intoxicatingly beautiful, his stories weave a mesmerizing and intricate web of situations and characters, and his settings are spectacular.
The Autumn of the Patriarch, the author’s favorite novel, is the story of lonely dictator, a grotesque character surrounded by enemies. He’s forc...more

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Feb 10, 2012 Sanabel Atya rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"خريفُ البطريرك،،رواية
خطب الديكتاتور الموزونة،،قصيدة لمحمود درويش
وكلاهما يخطان السيرة ذاتها!"

للوهلة الأولى،وربما تنتهي من الفصل الأول دون أن تفهم شيئاً،أو بمعنى أدق-مش عارف وين راس الرواية و وين رجليها!-وهذا بسبب كيفية صياغة العبارت،في طريقة فريدة من نوعها.
حقاً،لحتى هذه اللحظة،أقفُ عاجزة أمام عبقرية هذا الرجل -على الأقل- في كيفية صياغة الجمل،صياغة جمل طويلة جداً،بحيث أنه نادراً ما استخدم الفواصل والنقاط! ربما استخدم نقطة واحدة فقط في فصل كامل.
قرأتها بالعربية،،ويقول المُترجم أنه حاول قدر المُستطا...more

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Sep 02, 2011 Ivan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Es laberíntico. Inexorable. Exquisitamente poético y temerariamente violento. Histórico y ficticio. Verborreico hasta la coronilla y sin embargo contiene todas las palabras necesarias. Es un libro de amor y de tiranía. Es un recital de cariño y un epílogo del abuso. Así es El otoño del patriarca, uno de los mejores libros del Gabo. Confieso que el señor es uno de los santos más distinguidos en mi altar (con todo y su homofobia encarnizada) y que este libro me dejó trastornado. Descuajaringado. N...more

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Jun 20, 2009 C. marked it as to-read

Shelves: south-american

Martin tells us that in García Márquez’s own estimation, his greatest book is “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” from 1975 — a book that is an extended homage to Darío, who is invoked at the beginning and again at the very end, and who, somewhere in the middle, shows up as a character, sailing into port on a banana boat to deliver a poetry recitation. Every last sentence in “The Autumn of the Patriarch” offers a heroic demonstration of man’s triumph over language — unless it is language’s triumph ov...more Martin tells us that in García Márquez’s own estimation, his greatest book is “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” from 1975 — a book that is an extended homage to Darío, who is invoked at the beginning and again at the very end, and who, somewhere in the middle, shows up as a character, sailing into port on a banana boat to deliver a poetry recitation. Every last sentence in “The Autumn of the Patriarch” offers a heroic demonstration of man’s triumph over language — unless it is language’s triumph over man. The sentences begin in one person’s voice and conclude in someone else’s, or change their subject halfway through, or wander across the centuries, and, even so, conform sufficiently to the rules of rhetoric to carry you along. To read is to gasp. You want to break into applause at the shape and grandeur of those sentences, not to mention their length. And yet to do so you would need to set down the book, which cannot be done, owing to the fact that, just when the impulse to clap your hands has become irresistible, the sentence you are reading has begun to round a corner, and you have no alternative but to clutch onto the book as if steering a car that has veered out of control.

Those are gorgeous sentences, but they are also tyrannical — and tyranny, in the conventional political sense, is entirely the novel’s theme. “The Autumn of the Patriarch” tells the story of a despot ruling over an unnamed and benighted Caribbean land. It is a dictator novel. The marriage of plot and prosody makes it a masterpiece — a greater triumph even than Mario Vargas Llosa’s marvelously brilliant “Feast of the Goat,” which is likewise a Caribbean dictator novel, and likewise invokes Rubén Darío. “The Autumn of the Patriarch” does have a puzzling quality, though. The dictator whose portrait emerges from those tropical-flower sentences is monstrous and despicable — yet even his creepiest tyrannical traits are presented as signs of the human condition, deserving of pity and compassion, maybe even a kind of sorrowful love. I have always wondered what sort of political attitude García Márquez meant to convey with those peculiar ambiguities.

Paul Berman, New York Times, June 7 2009.(less)

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May 09, 2009 Amit rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the tragic story of a dictator and the country he rules for 100 years. He is unwittingly installed in the seat of power by the imperialists, the fifteenth dictator in eleven years, and then he stays there for the next hundred. He realizes that he has no choice but to stay in power because if he relaxes his hold, he will either be killed or be banished forever to live a penniless, sad life, far away from his land. With every brutality he commits, he closes a door on reconcilliation. Till...more

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Aug 17, 2009 L.S. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

Romanul este probabil cel mai meticulos lucrat dintre toate cartile lui Marquez. Fiecare cuvant este la locul lui, fiecare descriere este puternica. Un paradox: datorita modalitatii in care este scrisa, cu descrieri deosebit de amanuntite si stufoase, uneori o fraza intinzandu-se chiar pe 10 pagini(!), lectura este antrenanta si rapida insa in acelasi timp este si foarte solicitanta si epuizanta, probabil din cauza textului extrem de dens. Unele descrieri au chiar o tenta suprarealista, multe su...more

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Apr 08, 2013 C.G. Fewston rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) is an ambitious novel, especially for any skilled and intelligent reader. In the 229-page novel, consisting of six chapters, there are exactly six paragraphs (no joke!). Each chapter is one paragraph running on for approximately thirty to forty pages, with absolutely no line breaks at any time. At times, on average, a sentence runs for over a page in length. The novel has about one period per page, no quotation marks, commas galore, making this novel by Márquez...more The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) is an ambitious novel, especially for any skilled and intelligent reader. In the 229-page novel, consisting of six chapters, there are exactly six paragraphs (no joke!). Each chapter is one paragraph running on for approximately thirty to forty pages, with absolutely no line breaks at any time. At times, on average, a sentence runs for over a page in length. The novel has about one period per page, no quotation marks, commas galore, making this novel by Márquez one hell of a read (far more exerting than his previously published novel One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1967). This novel is not for the timid who desire a simple, mindless read.

The story is primarily about citizens who tell a running narrative, often overlapping in points-of-view, about the General of the Universe, a murderous and afflicted dictator of an unnamed Caribbean nation. At one point he delivers a traitor on a silver platter to his high commanders at the dinner table and tells them to eat, and to enjoy. The General further believes that “the only document of identity of an overthrown president should be his death certificate” (p 15). Another time he sends thousands of children, who were involved in a lottery scam that always chose the General as the winner, out to the sea to be drowned in order to hide his secret. The despotism becomes twisted and the General can no longer determine what is true and real and what has been imagined. He orders his men to create an eclipse for a lover, and it is done as he requested because he is so feared by all on earth.

“All the more pained,” the General reflects in one small section of a sentence, “as he deciphered more deeply the weave of the false truths with which they had diverted his attention for so many years in order to hide the brutal truth that my lifetime comrade was in the service of politicians of fortune whom for convenience sake he had taken from the darkest corners of the federalist war and had made them rich and had heaped fabulous privileges upon them…and they still wanted more, God damn it, they wanted the place of the elect of God that he had reserved for himself, they wanted to be me, motherfuckers” (p 102-103).

And the novel can only go one place, and that is to the finale of the General’s “second” death, the first having been a double who died and all were convinced it was in fact the General until the General rose on the third day and restored order and executed those guilty of treason and for having desecrated the supposed General’s body. And as you get to the final sentence (or at least the final section of the final sentence), you begin to understand the genius behind the author’s choice of extremely long sentences, as if the reader has been caught in an eternal whirlpool of no escape: “alien to the clamor of the frantic crowds who took to the streets singing hymns of joy at the jubilant news of his death and alien forevermore to the music of liberation and the rockets of jubilation and the bells of glory that announced to the world the good news that the uncountable time of eternity had come to an end” (p 229).

This is my seventh Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, and yes, I am a fan and will likely read most, if not all of his other works. Therefore, if you, dear reader, are a fan of Márquez, then I recommend this novel. Otherwise, stay far, far away if you are expecting one of those novels so often found in print these days and can be read with little to no real effort. For this novel, the reader of a dedicated nature is required to work, but the benefits are profound and extraordinary.
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Sep 03, 2012 something_ rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, literature-other, philosophy-existentialism-morality

This was... a strange book. It was the first book I read by this author, and my enjoyment of the first part suffered while I didn't get used to the style - sentences that extend across several pages, the heavy comma use, and frequent change of the narrating voice midsentence were some of the aspects I found most noticeable. This style reminds me much of the one used by Saramago.

We start by being presented with the people who found the General's lifeless body, and we are then offered insight abou...more

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Jan 30, 2011 Fabian rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It is hard not to distinguish the writer's infamous tone and subject matter in this sumptuous tale which might be the first time that a character study is so well meshed with the locale of his biography: "The Autumn of the Patriarch" in less than 50 sentences spanning pages and pages and a thick layering of symbols and leit motifs tells the sad story of a mad tyrant ruler who, despite being bathed in power and glory, is nonetheless a HUMAN: he kills but suffers immensely and if the book were a p...more

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Jun 16, 2012 Gabbo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Beware, those of you who have not read a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book yet! The style and literary techniques employed by the venerable author here are not, at first, user-friendly. In place of a sequence of actions, a run-on assault of descriptions tell the tale of a seemingly immortal yet completely despicable Caribbean tyrant. Sentences last for pages, each chapter is but one paragraph, the narrative perspective changes in mid-sentence, etc: This anti-traditional approach proves to be extremely...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Molly Ison added it

Shelves: westeros-sff-book-list

This is less a novel and more an experience. Sometimes it's beautiful, sometimes rewarding, sometimes frustrating, sometimes fascinating and sometimes boring. I cannot say that I enjoyed every word from beginning to end but nevertheless I was astonished at the craftsmanship in the way the text was shaped.

In most ways, this craftsmanship was The Autumn of the Patriarch's greatest strength. There can be absolutely no doubt, both from the history of the author to what's present in the reading, tha...more

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Mar 04, 2009 Reza akbari rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

وب گردي منو به اينجا كشوند. گيج بودم كه يه كتاب اشنا ديدم. بيش از ده سال پيش اين كتابو خوندم. تو زمان دانشجويي. چيز زيادي ازش يادم نمي آيد اما خوب به خاطر دارم كه كتاب رو يه نفس خوندم. مثل كسي به سرهنگ نامه نمي نويسد و صد سال تنهايي. اثر درخشاني است. خوب بخونيدش. اثركتاب در روزهاي تنهايي آدم بيشتر مي‌شود.زمانيكه كه يه چيزي مد ميشه و ديگران ادم رو فراموش مي كنند.آهان يادم اومد. يه بخش محاسبه هزينه تخم مرغ براي كارگر داشتكه كلي بهاش خنديدم.

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Dec 10, 2012 Linaart rated it 5 of 5 stars

Трудно ми е да си представя, че човек може да напише това... Мога да го повярвам, само като си спомня, че същият човек е написал „Сто години самота”. Но тук задачата му е била сякаш още по-трудна – в сравнение с роящите се поколения в „Сто години самота”, в „Есента на патриарха” има единствен център – диктаторът (обобщаващ образ на латиноамериканския диктатор – защо не на който и да е диктатор).

Дали съм свикнала със стила на Маркес, дали тази творба наистина е изумителна – четох я много лесно,...more Трудно ми е да си представя, че човек може да напише това... Мога да го повярвам, само като си спомня, че същият човек е написал „Сто години самота”. Но тук задачата му е била сякаш още по-трудна – в сравнение с роящите се поколения в „Сто години самота”, в „Есента на патриарха” има единствен център – диктаторът (обобщаващ образ на латиноамериканския диктатор – защо не на който и да е диктатор).

Дали съм свикнала със стила на Маркес, дали тази творба наистина е изумителна – четох я много лесно, а се предполага, че е трудничка - няма пряка реч, няма нови параграфи, няма глави (почти), изреченията са от по няколко страници! Страшно много ми хареса смяната на разказвача насред ”изречението” – някой разказва за диктатора и изведнъж самият той поема разказа за себе си. Сякаш разказването е започнато от някого, но когато започне да говори патриархът, просто влизаш окончателно в действието. Така хем се постига усещане за градация, засилващи се емоции, хем се внушава абсолютната налудничавост на всичко това и че Патриархът е навсякъде, дори и в мислите на хората... ("майко мила, Бендисион Алварадо..." ;) )

Мислех си, че не чета книги с ужаси, но тук ги поглъщах без отвращение, защото са описани така, че повече впечатлява начинът, по който Маркес ги представя, а не толкова самите извращения. Естествено всичко е хиперболизирано, гротескно. И едва ли не читателят може да съжали горкичкия Патриарх... (добре, че имаше три жени в живота му – т.е. важните, освен хилядите други...) Самото „управление” не е единственият фокус, направена е „дисекция” и на личността на диктатора – по крайно нестандартен начин обаче... Направо гнусен - безкомпромисен е Маркес!

Не знам защо тази книга не е толкова известна като „Сто години самота”. Може би защото не всеки се интересува от политика, от диктатори?! (тя не е точно за политика...). Но независимо от темата, за мен тя е за всеки, който иска да се докосне до пример за литературна мощ. Казват, че книгата е писана в продължение на седем години, но звучи така, сякаш е един спонтанен и безконечен „излив” – т.е. написана като в бълнуване, като в полусън, без планове и редакции, просто излята от свръхчовешкото въображение, от един владетел на словото...

Смея да твърдя, че произведението на Маркес е уникално с безкрайната си фантазия и проницателност. С нетрадиционната форма, с безкомпромисната ирония и натурализъм; всичко е в много, в повече, разчепкано до най-малкия детайл, задълбано, повторено, потретено, задъхващо. Наистина дишах на двойни и тройни обороти през цялото време. Бях в двореца на Патриарха при всичките му зверства и копнежи, животински страсти и човешки тръпки, изблици на помрачаващ гняв и моменти на обърканост, прояви на твърдост и признаци на противоречивост, мания за безсмъртие и трескав страх, прозрения и заблуди, самосъжаление и детинска радост... и безкрайна и неизбежна самота.

Разбираема е и гледната точка, че диктаторът често е просто едно чучело, че около него и чрез него се върти големият свят и той е удобното оръжие на диктатурата; ролята на международните сили по отношение на „банановите републики” естествено не беше пропусната.

Накрая почувствах – самият Маркес е магически реализъм! Не само произведенията му! Казвам го по-общо, не конкретно за тази книга, защото самият той казва, че в нея едва ли има нещо преувеличено в сравнение с реалната действителност при една диктатура...(less)

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Oct 15, 2010 Ahmed rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bright-stars-in-my-hand

هذه الرواية من الفئة التي تود ألا تنتهي أبدًا وتحاول قراءة الكلمات حرفًا حرفًا خوفًا من الوصول إلى صفحة النهاية،

شعرت بالفراغ الرهيب عقب انتهائي منها

رواية أحضرها ماركيز لنا من الجحيم مباشرة ..

---

ولنا أذواق ..

أعطيت هذه الرواية مع مجموعة روايات أخرى لأحد أصدقائي، فكانت هذه أول الكتب رجوعًا لي (وآخرها عاد بعد سنة ونصف تقريبًا ^_^ )، وقال أنه لم يستطع تجاوز الفصل الأول!!

لا أعلم، ولكنها مازلت تبهرني حتى الثمالة!!

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Jan 06, 2011 D.S. rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-and-wished-i-had-not

I was assigned this book in college. It permanently turned me against the author, which, given that he wrote this book, isn't entirely undeserved. I suffered through another, but no, the breakage was done.

I found I couldn't stay in the book due to the experimental form (each chapter is a single sentence with frequently-shifting points of view), and the patriarch in question (who doesn't deserve a capital letter) reprehensible enough that I really didn't want to read his thoughts ever. Anything,...more

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Aug 12, 2010 Citlalli rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

¡Excelente! ¡García Márquez en todo su esplendor!

Este libro es un estudio profundo de la personalidad y vida de un tirano que nos revela sus motivos, su manera de pensar, y hasta sus miedos más íntimos, desembocando finalmente en un estado de decrepitud que da lástima.

Creo que el mensaje general del libro se puede resumir en un par de líneas que se encuentran al final del mismo: "...al cabo de tantos y tantos años de ilusiones estériles había empezado a vislumbrar que no se vive, qué carajo, se...more

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Feb 28, 2013 Saverio Mariani rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: narrativa-sud-americana

Sì, lo so. Sto parlando di uno dei miei scrittori preferiti. Devo utilizzare bene le parole, come lui fa in modo assolutamente geniale, e devo cercare di far capire al meglio tutto quello che García Márquez esprime attraverso il suo mondo fantastico.
Ho letto molti libri di Márquez, negli anni. Già da quando frequentavo il liceo.
Mi ricordo che Macondo (la città magica, inventata, tropicale, in cui è ambientato Cent’anni di solitudine) mi aveva così catturato che avrei voluto farci un viaggio. R...more

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Apr 16, 2011 Cristian Sandoval rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

A dictator that many times for his people was only a legend, who chose the top ranks of the army on impulse, and repressed with weapons attempts to overthrow him. a submissive and poor people did not own their own lives, and that was over a hundred years under a military government. a general who in his old age did not even know who he was, who had lost everything except the memory of his mother who was made Holy by decree. Who died lying face down with his arm under his head that serves as a...more

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Mar 22, 2010 Rui Gil rated it 5 of 5 stars

Quando se fala de Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a maior parte das pessoas, cita o seu livro mais conhecido, "100 anos de solidão", mas este é de longe a sua obra prima. Este livro é GGM e toda a América do Sul em estado concentrado. Estado puro.

Apesar de ser um livro pequeno, não o consegui ler à primeira, porque a densidade narrativa aliado a um estilo que Saramago também pratica, de não haver pontos finais, mas apenas longas e imensas frases, tornam este livro difícil para o Leitor. É preciso uma gr...more

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About Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. García Márquez, familiarly known as "Gabo" in his native country, is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. In 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He started as a journalist, and has written many acclaimed non-fiction works and short st...more

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“...the day shit is worth money, poor people will be born without an asshole” — 10 people liked it

“an old man with no destiny with our never knowing who he was, or what he was like, or even if he was only a figment of the imagination, a comic tyrant who never knew where the reverse side was and where the right of this life which we loved with an insatiable passion that you never dared even to imagine out of the fear of knowing what we knew only too well that it was arduous and ephemeral but there wasn't any other, general, because we knew who we were while he was left never knowing it forever with the soft whistle of his rupture of a dead old man cut off at the roots by the slash of death, flying through the dark sound of the last frozen leaves of his autumn toward the homeland of shadows of the truth of oblivion, clinging to his fear of the rotting cloth of death's hooded cassock and alien to the clamor of the frantic crowds who took to the streets singing hymns of joy at the jubilant news of his death and alien forevermore to the music of liberation and the rockets of jubilation and the bells of glory that announced to the world the good news that the uncountable time of eternity had come to an end.” — 6 people liked it

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