Guide to magical realism

Reading lists

A guide to magical realism

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Where to start reading Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s books

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Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Memories of My Melancholy Whores is a powerful novel about a man who so far has never felt love from Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez, author of the One Hundred Years of Solitude. 
 
'The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin' 
 
On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a newspaper columnist in Colombia decides to give himself 'a night of mad love with a virgin adolescent'. But on seeing this beautiful girl he falls deeply under her spell. His love for his 'Delgadina' causes him to recall all the women he has paid to perform acts of love. And so the columnist realises he must chronicle the life of his heart, to offer it freely to the world. . . 
 
'Márquez describes this amorous, sometimes disturbing journey with the grace and vigour of a master storyteller' Daily Mail 
 
'Márquez is wonderful on the transformative and redemptive powers of love. . . storytelling magic' Tatler 
 
'Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do' Salman Rushie

There is not one stale sentence, redundant word or unfinished thought

A velvety pleasure to read... Márquez has composed, with his usual sensual gravity and Olympian humour, a love letter to the dying light.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014) was a short-story writer, novelist, journalist and a screenwriter from Colombia. He was a reporter for a Colombian newspaper, El Espectador, and also a foreign correspondent stationed in New York, Rome, Paris and Barcelona. Marquez is the author of numerous popular novels and short stories. He is well known for his unique literary style known as magical realism, in which he describes reality through magical events and elements. His most popular novels include Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.

'The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself a gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin' 
 
He has never married, never loved and never gone to bed with a woman he didn't pay. But on finding a young girl naked and asleep on the brothel owner's bed, a passion is ignited in his heart - and he feels, for the first time, the urgent pangs of love. 
 
Memories of My Melancholy Whores is re-issued on Gabriel García Márquez 's birthday to celebrate the publication of his books as ebooks for the first time.

I'm Not Here to Give a Speech

Penguin presents I'm Not Here to Give a Speech, the complete speeches of Nobel laureate and beloved novelist Gabriel García Márquez collected and published in English for the first time. 
 
Gabriel García Márquez has charmed generations of readers with his distinctive and richly expressive style. His talent for language is seen here as never before, in the public speeches he gave throughout his extraordinary life. These speeches chart Márquez's growth as a writer and orator, from an early talk given as a teenager graduating high school to his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. They offer new insight into the workings of the author's mind, drawing a portrait of Marquez as a writer and as a man. 
 
This is a rare gem from a writer who touched readers across the globe. I Am Not Here to Give a Speech is a must-buy for anyone who ever fell in love with Macondo or cherished a battered copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. 
 
Praise for Gabriel García Márquez: 
 
'The greatest novel in any language of the last fifty years' Salman Rushdie on One Hundred Years of Solitude 
 
'Should be required reading for the entire human race' New York Times on One Hundred Years of Solitude 
 
'A masterpiece' Evening Standard on Chronicle of a Death Foretold 
 
'As a reading experience it is completely magical' Observer on Living to Tell the Tale 
 
'It asks to be read more than twice, and the rewards are dazzling' Observer on The Autumn of the Patriarch 
 
'Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do' Salman Rusdhie on Collected Stories

'Radiates a familiar humorous charm and robust sensuality'

This volume should fit nicely inside a Christmas stocking, perhaps belonging to a young writer

I'm Not Here... proves the Colombian to be as poetic and polemical in speaking as he was in writing

One of this century's most evocative writers

Marquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do

An exquisite writer, wise, compassionate and extremely funny

Throughout his life Gabriel Garcia Marquez spoke with the same passion and energy as he wrote, charming listeners with his speeches as beguilingly as he did his millions of readers. Now in this collection of speeches, translated into English for the first time, we see the wisdom and compassion of his public talks. 
 
I Am Not Here to Give a Speech records key events throughout Marquez's life, from a talk as a teenager graduating high school to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Written over the course of a lifetime, they chart the growth of his genius: each is a snapshot, offering new insights into the beliefs and ideas of a world-renowned storyteller. Together, they combine to create a more complete picture of Marquez the writer and the man. 
 
Preserving Marquez's unmistakable voice for future generations, I Am Not Here to Give a Speech is a must-have collection for anyone who ever fell in love with Macondo or cherished a battered copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. 
 
Translated by Edith Grossman

For the first time, the speeches of prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez are translated into English and published together in a collected edition. These writings span Marquez's entire life: from his earliest days, speaking as a teenager graduating high school, to his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. Taken as a whole, this collection offers a unique and fascinating insight into Marquez's long career, highlighting his concerns and beliefs both as a writer and as a man. 
 
Marquez was beloved throughout his life and celebrated posthumously as a true literary genius. This collection of previously unseen material, written in his distinctively rich and expressive style, will appeal to any Marquez fan.

In Evil Hour

In Evil Hour is the thrilling story of a Colombian society menaced by rumour and paranoia by the Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez, author of the One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. 
 
As a small South American town sweats under an oppressive heat, an unknown person creeps through the night sticking malicious posters to walls and doors. When the contents of one poster lead to a murder, everyone knows that the town is threatened by a malevolent presence - but is there anything that the mayor, the doctor or the priest can do about it? 
 
'In Evil Hour was the book which was to inspire my own career as a novelist. I owe my writing voice to that one book!' Jim Crace 
 
'Belongs to the very best of Márquez's work...should on no account be missed' Financial Times 
 
'A splendid achievement' The Times

In Evil Hour was the book which was to inspire my own career as a novelist. I owe my writing voice to that one book!

Belongs to the very best of M&aacute;rquez's work&hellip; should on no account be missed

'César Montero was dreaming about elephants. He'd seen them at the movies on Sunday...' 
 
Moments later, César is arrested by police who clear the crowds away from the man he has just killed. 
 
But César is not the only man riled the rumours spread in his hometown - someone creeps through the streets sticking malicious posters to walls and doors. Paranoia seeps through the town - can the perpetrator be uncovered before leaving the inhabitants' sanity in tatters? 
 
In Evil Hour is re-issued on Gabriel García Márquez 's birthday to celebrate the publication of his books as ebooks for the first time.

Living to Tell the Tale

In Living to Tell the Tale Gabriel Garcia Marquez - winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude - recounts his personal experience of returning to the house in which he grew up and the memories that this visit conjured. 
 
'My mother asked me to go with her to sell the house' 
 
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was twenty-three, a young man experimenting with his writing when this mother asked him to come back with her to the village of his grandparents and the memories of his Colombian childhood. 
 
In the first part of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's memoir, the Nobel Prize-winning author returns to the atmosphere and influences that shaped his formidable imagination and formed the basis of his world-famous, and much-loved, fiction. 
 
'A treasure trove, a discovery of a lost land we knew existed but couldn't find. A thrilling miracle of a book' The Times 
 
'A marvellous journey. Never less than a miracle' Sunday Times 
 
'Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no one else can do' Salman Rushdie

M&aacute;rquez's greatest book. As a reading experience it is completely magical

'My mother asked me to go with her to sell the house' 
 
Gabriel García Márquez was twenty-three when his mother asked him to come with her, back to the village of Aracataca. In this first part of Gabriel García Márquez's memoir, the Nobel prize-winning author returns to the atmosphere and influences that that shaped his formidable imagination and formed the basis of his world-famous, and much-loved, fiction. 
 
Living to Tell the Tale is re-issued on Gabriel García Márquez 's birthday to celebrate the publication of his books as ebooks for the first time.

News of a Kidnapping

Gabriel García Márquez's News of a Kidnapping is a powerful retelling of actual events from a turbulent period of Colombian history. 
 
'She looked over her shoulder before getting into the car to be sure no one was following her' 
 
Pablo Escobar: billionaire drugs baron, ruthless manipulator brutal killer and jefe of the infamous Madellín cartel. A man whose importance in the international drug trade and renown for his charitable work among the poor brought him influence and power in his home country of Colombia, and the unwanted attention of the American courts. 
 
Terrified of the new Colombian President's determination to extradite him to America, Escobar found the best bargaining tools he could find: hostages. 
 
In the winter of 1990, ten relatives of Colombian politicians, mostly women, were abducted and held hostage as Escobar attempted to strong-arm the government into blocking his extradition. Two died, the rest survived, and from their harrowing stories Márquez retells, with vivid clarity, the terror and uncertainty of those dark an volatile months. 
 
'Reads with an urgency which belongs to the finest fiction. I have never read anything which gave a better sense of the way Colombia was in worst times' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Compellingly readable. A book with all the panache of Márquez's fiction, hitting home rather harder' Sunday Times 
 
'A piece of remarkable investigative journalism made all the more brilliant by the author's talent for magical storytelling' Financial Times

Marquez uses his novelist's instinct for emotional drama to give the reader a wonderfully immediate sense of his subjects' ordeal: their spiraling hopes and fears, their fantasies of escape, their desperation and despair.

Compellingly readable. A book with all the panache of M&aacute;rquez's fiction, hitting home rather harder

A story only a writer of M&aacute;rquez's stature could tell so brilliantly. A tour de force

The great strength of the book is the authority of its details. There is so much here that, as we say, no one would make up

Pablo Escobar: billionaire drugs baron, brutal killer and jefe of the infamous Medellín cartel. Terrified of the new Colombian President's determination to extradite him to America, Escobar found the best bargaining tools he could find: hostages. 
 
In the winter of 1990, ten relatives of Colombian politicians were abducted and held hostage as Escobar attempted to strong-arm the government into blocking his extradition. Márquez retells, with vivid clarity, the terror and uncertainty of those dark, volatile months. 
 
News of a Kidnapping is re-issued on Gabriel García Márquez 's birthday to celebrate the publication of his books as ebooks for the first time.

Strange Pilgrims

Strange Pilgrims is a collection of unforgettable stories about distinctive South American individuals in Europe from the Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. 
 
'The 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' 
 
The twelve stories here tell of Latin Americans adrift in Europe: a bereaved father in Rome for an audience with the Pope carries a box shaped like a cello case; an aging streetwalker waits for death in Barcelona with a dog trained to weep at her grave; a panic-stricken husband takes his wife to a Parisian hospital to treat a cut and never sees her again. Combining terror and nostalgia, surreal comedy and the poetry of the commonplace, Strange Pilgrims is a triumph of storytelling by our most brilliant writer. 
 
'Celebratory 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 
 
'The most important writer of fiction in any language' Bill Clinton 
 
'Often touching, often funny, always unexpected, the experience is as enriching as travel itself' New Statesman

Celebratory and full of strange relish at life's oddness. The stories draw their strength from M&aacute;rquez's generous feel for character, good and bad, boorish and innocent

Filled with greedy joys, with small pleasures, polished like apples against a sleeve

Often touching, often funny, always unexpected, the experience is as enriching as travel itself

Their 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... 
 
These pilgrims - the ageing prostitute preparing for death, 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 - experience what it is to be an outsider living far from home. 
 
Strange Pilgrims is re-issued on Gabriel García Márquez 's birthday to celebrate the publication of his books as ebooks for the first time.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The most important writer of fiction in any language

'Suddenly, as if a whirlwind had set down roots in the center of the town, the banana company arrived, pursued by the leaf storm' 
 
A blizzard of slums descends on Macondo; the inhabitants reel at the accompanying stench. When the banana company leaves town as fast as it arrived, they are left with a void of decay. 
 
Living in this soulless wasteland is one last honourable man, who is determined to fulfil a longstanding promise, however unpalatable. 
 
Leaf Storm is re-issued on Gabriel García Márquez 's birthday to celebrate the publication of his books in ebook for the first time.

Leaf Storm

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A guide to magical realism

Must-read books of 2024: A look back at the year’s most exciting releases

100 must-read classics, as chosen by our readers

Where to start reading Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s books

Reading Remedy: books to help you deal with unrequited love

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