Authors: Gabriel Garcia Marquez,Gregory Rabassa
In Evil Hour (20 page)
âAn imaginative writer of genius, the topmost pinnacle of an entire generation of Latin American novelists of cathedral-like proportions'
Guardian
In a decaying Colombian town the Colonel and his sick wife are living from day to day, scraping together funds for food and medicine. Each Friday the Colonel waits for a letter to come in the post, hoping for the pension he is owed that will change their lives. While he waits the Colonel puts his hopes in his rooster â a prize bird that will make him money when cockfighting comes into season. But until then the bird â like the Colonel and his ailing wife â must somehow be fed â¦
âSuperb and intensely readable'
Time Out
âAn ash-gray dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst onto the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday of December â¦'
When a witch doctor appears on the doorstep of the Marquis de Casalduero prophesizing a plague of rabies in their Colombian seaport, he dismisses her claims â until, that is, he hears that his young daughter, Sierva MarÃa, was one of four people bitten by a rabid dog, and the only one to survive.
Sierva MarÃa appears completely unscathed â but as rumours of the plague spread, the Marquis and his wife wonder at her continuing good health. In a town consumed by superstition, it's not long before they, and everyone else, put her survival down to a demonic possession and begin to see her supernatural powers as the cause of the town's woes. Only the young priest charged with exorcising the evil spirit recognizes the girl's sanity, but can he convince the town that it's not her that needs healing?
âBrilliantly moving. A tour de force' A.S. Byatt
âA compassionate, witty and unforgettable masterpiece'
Daily Telegraph
âAt once nostalgic and satiric, a resplendent fable'
Sunday Times
âThe greatest novel in any language of the last 50 years. Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do' Salman Rushdie
âMany years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano BuendÃa was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice â¦'
Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly founded village where José Arcadio BuendÃa and his strong-willed wife, Ãrsula, have started their new life. As the mysterious MelquÃades excites Aureliano BuendÃa's father with new inventions and tales of adventure, neither can know the significance of the indecipherable manuscript that the old gypsy passes into their hands.
Through plagues of insomnia, civil war, hauntings and vendettas, the many tribulations of the BuendÃa household push memories of the manuscript aside. Few remember its existence and only one will discover the hidden message that it holdsâ¦
âShould be required reading for the entire human race'
New York Times
âNo lover of fiction can fail to respond to the grace of Márquez's writing'
Sunday Telegraph
âIt's the most magical book I have ever read. I think Márquez has influenced the world' Carolina Herrera
âFilled with greedy joys, with small pleasures, polished like apples against a sleeve'
Observer
âThe first thing Señora Prudencia Linero noticed when she reached the port of Naples was that it had the same smell as the port of Riohacha â¦'
Their distant, nostalgic memories of home, their sense of anonymity in a foreign land, the terrifying pang of vulnerability they feel as they step over the threshold into an alien world â¦
Márquez's strange pilgrims â the ageing prostitute preparing for death by teaching her dog to weep at her grave, the panicked husband scared for the life of his injured wife, the old man who allows his mind to wander on a long-haul flight from Paris â experience with all his humour, warmth and colour, what it is to be a Latin American adrift in Europe or, indeed, any outsider living far from home.
âCelebratory and full of strange relish at life's oddness. The stories draw their strength from Márquez's generous feel for character, good and bad, boorish and innocent' William Boyd
âThe most important writer of fiction in any language' Bill Clinton
âOften touching, often funny, always unexpected, the experience is as enriching as travel itself'
New Statesman