A new edition of A Hundred Years of Solitude in Cuba
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- 12 / 28 / 2007
A new edition of A Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez, was presented here last December 26th as a tribute to the 80 years of an indispensable writer in the history of Spanish speaking literature.
Illustrated by the painter Roberto Fabelo and published by the editorial house Arte y Literatura, the Instituto Cubano del Libro (Cuban Book Institute) also celebrates with this volume the 40th anniversary of a book that marked a new way for narration and opened the boom of Latin American literature, during the 1960s.
The novel placed Macondo in the world map, a territory like William Faulkners Yoknapatawpha which entered into the double reign of reality and dreams on its own right.
When he started writing it, at the age of 38 years, after already four published books, García Márquez only had a paragraph on his mind, which was imposed upon him by it, as he himself confessed.
"Many years later, in front of the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that long forgotten afternoon when his father took him to know the ice." He had no idea of its meaning. He had no idea where it would lead him.
Today that phrase is repeated by heart, as it was done forty years ago, by millions of people in the most diverse geographical regions in the planet.
The readers of A Hundred Years of Solitude- as Gabo would remember, still with embarrassment, at the Congreso Mundial de la Lengua (World Language Congress) in Cartagena de Indias- "form today a community which, if they were to live in the same piece of land, it would be one of the twenty countries most populated of the world."
In Cuba, the novel is a familiar presence and this new edition is an opportunity for the reader to pay tribute to Gabo as well as to himself.
Next February, during the 2008 Book Festival, A Hundred Years of Solitude will be circulating around the stands of the 40 cities of the country, and even in the mountain towns, persecuted by old and new readers.
This initiative ties together, in the same tribute, Gabo and the already deceased Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, in the 103rd anniversary of his birth. Two founders of Latin American novel writing embraced together.
(PL)
Illustrated by the painter Roberto Fabelo and published by the editorial house Arte y Literatura, the Instituto Cubano del Libro (Cuban Book Institute) also celebrates with this volume the 40th anniversary of a book that marked a new way for narration and opened the boom of Latin American literature, during the 1960s.
The novel placed Macondo in the world map, a territory like William Faulkners Yoknapatawpha which entered into the double reign of reality and dreams on its own right.
When he started writing it, at the age of 38 years, after already four published books, García Márquez only had a paragraph on his mind, which was imposed upon him by it, as he himself confessed.
"Many years later, in front of the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that long forgotten afternoon when his father took him to know the ice." He had no idea of its meaning. He had no idea where it would lead him.
Today that phrase is repeated by heart, as it was done forty years ago, by millions of people in the most diverse geographical regions in the planet.
The readers of A Hundred Years of Solitude- as Gabo would remember, still with embarrassment, at the Congreso Mundial de la Lengua (World Language Congress) in Cartagena de Indias- "form today a community which, if they were to live in the same piece of land, it would be one of the twenty countries most populated of the world."
In Cuba, the novel is a familiar presence and this new edition is an opportunity for the reader to pay tribute to Gabo as well as to himself.
Next February, during the 2008 Book Festival, A Hundred Years of Solitude will be circulating around the stands of the 40 cities of the country, and even in the mountain towns, persecuted by old and new readers.
This initiative ties together, in the same tribute, Gabo and the already deceased Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, in the 103rd anniversary of his birth. Two founders of Latin American novel writing embraced together.
(PL)
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