Book Review: "One Hundred Years Of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez

Written by Gabriel García Marquez, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is a novel that tells the tale of the fictitious town of Mocondo and the seven generations of the Buendia family who founded it. Through its dense plot, the book delves deep into the themes of love,hatred,jealousy, incest, and much more. It has numerous main characters whom we follow as they come into contact with gypsies from all around the world who bring new scientific discoveries each time they visit the town, from magnifying glasses to flying carpets. Later, one of the buendias, named Colonel Aureliano Buendia,fights in thirty-two different wars and has eighteen sons, each with a different woman. The older characters die as we move on, yet their ghosts still haunt the house for the rest of the book and even interact with the younger ones on multiple occasions, adding an element of surrealism to the book. There are a lot of deaths in the novel; some die of old age,some are executed, and in one case, one of the characters, named Remedios, literally levitates into the sky and never comes back. The novel ends as the last living member of the family finally deciphers the writing of the gypsy, who had written the complete history and fate of the Buendia family and each of its members, saying, "The first one is tied to a tree, and the last is being eaten by ants (in Sanskrit).

The narrative as well as the characters of the book are complex and unique and can be really confusing at times, but overall, the book is an engaging and interesting read.