The General in His Labyrinth (Everyman's Library) | 
|  | | | Title: | The General in His Labyrinth (Everyman's Library) | | Author: | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | | Publisher: | Everyman's Library | | Type: | Book / Hardcover | | Publication Date: | 26 October, 2004 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 1400043336 / 9781400043330 | | List Price: | $19.00 | | You Save: | $6.08 | | Amazon Price: | $12.92 | |
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Product Description
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Gabriel GarcĂa Márquez’s most political novel is the tragic story of General SimĂłn BolĂvar, the man who tried to unite a continent.
BolĂvar, known in six Latin American countries as the Liberator, is one of the most revered heroes of the western hemisphere; in GarcĂa Márquez’s brilliant reimagining he is magnificently flawed as well. The novel follows BolĂvar as he takes his final journey in 1830 down the Magdalena River toward the sea, revisiting the scenes of his former glory and lamenting his lost dream of an alliance of American nations. Forced from power, dogged by assassins, and prematurely aged and wasted by a fatal illness, the General is still a remarkably vital and mercurial man. He seems to remain alive by the sheer force of will that led him to so many victories in the battlefields and love affairs of his past. As he wanders in the labyrinth of his failing powers–and still-powerful memories–he defies his impending death until the last.
The General in His Labyrinth is an unforgettable portrait of a visionary from one of the greatest writers of our time.
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Customer Reviews:
• Solid, But Certainly Not His Best 21 July, 2006
For those of us who have come to love Marquez, this book comes as a slight disappointment. The story of Bolivar's final journey and his relationship both with a myriad of women and with his servant is full of interesting insights and anecdotes, but lacks the kind of beauty, especially in respects to setting and language, that his previous work displays. Maybe it's because he was trying to honor or at least chronicle an important figure in South American history, but the novel seems too confined in scope. Marquez is forced to confine his normally tangential and often beautiful descriptions to the life of a celebrated figure. That being said, this book is still a fascinating read and better than most of the novels on the market today.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2FD4CIFQJW7JI
• A Masterful Labyrinth 07 May, 2008
My theory is that Marquez literally attempted to make this book like a labyrinth to the reader. Chronologically the book goes all over the place, it does not follow a straight line, but rather it zig zags all over the place. As previous reviewers have mentioned, at times you feel like you've read what you've already read before. This is just like a labyrinth, you are there trying to find your way out, you run into a wall, you have to back out and retrace your steps, then proceed to figure out how to get out.
So Marquez possibly tried to create a new style with this work, the labyrinth novel. True literature written by a genius. Notice how he doesn't even number his chapters. After awhile of reading, you can't just pick up and say, "I'm in chapter five". You don't know what chapter you are in, they aren't numbered. In the novel you have no idea which way Marquez is going to turn. Forward, back, straight, sideways. No wonder so many people have had difficulty with this book, and some have not even finished. Marquez's labyrinth of a novel defeated them. I personally enjoy this novel, because it so different from his other works, and it's fascinating to read about Simon Bolivar and how he died such a lonely death after freeing South America of Spain's centuries' old grip. What a tragedy. Bolivar dies at the end, there is no way out of the labyrinth.
If you approach the novel with this perspective, it might make for a more enjoyable read. I give it 5 stars because Marquez is a master, there are abundant life lessons in this book (you just have to keep an eye out for them), it makes you think and wonder about life and the human condition and just how ungrateful some people can be to true heroes.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AWJTNMS3U5WNF
• Death As An Unavoidable Human Hazard 17 December, 2007
G.G. Márquez wrote a forceful, naturalistic evocation of the last years of South-America's most ambitious and most important statesman, Simón Bolivár. It is a real `horror story'.
Simón Bolivár's aim was to create a United States of South-America. He chased his outside enemy, Spain, from the continent, but could not defeat his inside enemy, the oligarchies, who `had declared war to death against the idea of integrity because it was unfavorable to the local privileges of the great families.'
As Simón Bolivár has said himself: `Everything I've done has been for the sole purpose of making this continent into a single, independent country. All the rest is bullsh.t.'
Simón Bolivár fought for an idea, not for personal gain or for special interests. Even on his deathbed he planned to fight for his goal against the oligarchies.
He was the great `Liberator', but he ended as `I'm old, sick, tired, disillusioned, harassed, slandered, and unappreciated.'
G.G. Márquez brushes a powerful, brutal picture of the political defeat and the corporal decline of a great man.
It is a bitter, pessimistic and realistic book.
Not to be missed.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A12A08OL0TZY0W
• Slow But Rewarding Read 20 October, 2006
Márquez moves slowly through the final chapter in the saga of a great man and historical figure. Sometimes frustratingly so. But I think this may be intentional on the author's part. After all, BolĂvar is renowned throughout Latin America for his tireless efforts to free the wayward continent and, when he had accomplished that, to prevent it from falling to shambles. The slow pace of the book reveals BolĂvar as the tired soul he had become after so much fighting, so much toil that suddenly seemed to count for nothing. It is not a book about battles for independence or monetary gain; instead it focuses on the constant battle against death and despair.
Most enjoyable of all in the book are the small gems of prescience on the part of BolĂvar--whether taken directly from historical documents or imparted on the general by Márquez--in which the old soldier predicts the pitfalls and chaos that will consume his land in the next 150 years. Though it's painful to read the cynical declarations of a man who has dedicated his life to a goal he now realizes is hopeless, these very pronunciations are what sets Márquez's General apart as a realistic and tragic character.
Though I found some parts difficult to trudge through, the book succeeds as a historical narrative, in that it provides insight into an entire continent's evolution through the eyes of one man.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A6XUM19PF237U
• Distressingly Soporific 06 December, 2004
I have a feeling that Gabo should have just let Alvaro Mutis sit on this project. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of at least three (really entertaining and pleasurable) masterpieces of fiction (One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, and the short stories of Strange Pilgrims), seems to have entered into a lull during the writing of The General in His Labyrinth. The best expression I can think of to classify this book is "distressingly soporific". The General (Simon Bolivar) always seems to be lying in the "aguas depurativas de la bañera" and the story moves as slowly as an old man's body (with apology to agile old men). There's barely a climax, and you were expecting it anyway: Bolivar dies. Meanwhile, Bolivar reflects on his political experiences and rather libertine love life, and treks with his entourage into exile. If you haven't read a lot of Garcia Marquez, try his masterpieces, and then his deep and satisfying memoir (Living to Tell the Tale), and don't bother with The General in his Labyrinth.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1BKMPCT84E7MR
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