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Summary
Summary
General Simon Bolivar, "the Liberator" of five South American countries, takes a last melancholy journey down the Magdalena River, revisiting cities along its shores, and reliving the triumphs, passions, and betrayals of his life. Infinitely charming, prodigiously successful in love, war and politics, he still dances with such enthusiasm and skill that his witnesses cannot believe he is ill. Aflame with memories of the power that he commanded and the dream of continental unity that eluded him, he is a moving exemplar of how much can be won--and lost--in a life. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Author Notes
Gabriel García Márquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia on March 6, 1927. After studying law and journalism at the National University of Colombia in Bogota, he became a journalist. In 1965, he left journalism, to devote himself to writing. His works included Leaf Storm, No One Writes to the Colonel, The Evil Hour, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The General in His Labyrinth, Clandestine in Chile, and the memoir Living to Tell the Tale. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. He died on April 17, 2014 at the age of 87.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Written in cogent, measured prose, moving to a somber internal rhythm, this short, historically based novel depicts the last days of Simon Bolivar, aka the Liberator of South America. Aged 46 in 1830, prematurely aged, weary and moribund, the General (as he is referred to throughout), once the hero and president of the republic of nations he freed from Spanish domination, is now past his glory. He is wandering destitute, having renounced the presidency and announced his imminent exile--an act he keeps postponing in the hopes that he will be returned to power. Widely reviled, the object of assassination attempts, suffering from chronic insomnia and daily fevers, the General is cynical, bitter and mercurial, frustrated by his failing powers but unable to face his impending death (``How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!'' he cries). In flashbacks that integrate capsule portraits of other historical figures important in Bolivar's life, Garcia Marquez invests the narrative with substance and veracity, but finds little opportunity to unleash his remarkable imagination; thus the novel lacks the incandescent quality of One Hundred Years of Solitude and other of his works of magical realism. The author himself regrets the lack of humor in what he refers to as ``the horror of this book.'' Readers will be impressed, but not beguiled. 150,000 first printing; first serial to the New Yorker; BOMC main selection. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
As the popularly agreed-upon preeminent Latin American storyteller, it is not unexpected that Garcia Márquez would take a turn at telling the epic story of Simón Bolivar, the Great Liberator. What is unexpected, somewhat, is that he would novelize the biography so slackly, dully, obligatorily: the book seems like a homework assignment for a Nobelist. We get a Bolivar here at his last: renouncing the presidency of Colombia, leaving Bogotá to journey along the Magdalena River, all the while clearly dying and putting his (and a continent's) final business in order. Garcia Márquez flashes back silkily to past loves and treacheries and alliances and personal suavities, but it's all done as though behind a screen: even Bolivar's prodigious erotic life--which threatens to burst through into the sort of high-relief gorgeousness that Márquezian prose can be at its best--remains inert and spalled. Bolivar comes across as a man of dignity and farsightedness, but more tangled inside the history he developed than defined by it. And the book seems to feel it must responsibly, officially register certain historical landmarks every so often, in dull prose: ""His officers may never have imagined to what extent this distribution of benefits joined their destinies. For better or worse, all of them would share the rest of their lives. . .fighting at the side of Commander Pedro Carujo in a military adventure intended to achieve the Bolivarist idea of integration."" Dutiful but dry as dust. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Choice Review
When this novel by Colombia's Nobel laureate first appeared in Spanish in 1989 it caused a heated controversy among the author's Latin American compatriots. In general, Latin Americans tended to be infuriated by the worldly and extremely realistic treatment of Simon Bolivar, their "Great Liberator" and hero in the campaign against the Spanish in the last century's wars for independence. The novel recounts General Bolivar's final journey down the Magdalena River as he prepares to leave a continent that has rejected his dream of unification. In narrating the general's journey down the river and into eventual exile, Garcia Marquez masterfully weaves memory with scenes from the present, juxtaposing the general's own existential labyrinth with that awaiting the continent he had hoped to unify. This text, like many of its predecessors, is an extraordinary study of the solitude of power, of the deterioration of body and spirit, of loss and disillusion, and of the inevitability of death. In it Garcia Marquez has created one of his most intriguing literary characters. The translation by Edith Grossman, who also did Love in the Time of Cholera (CH, Sep'88), is superb. Recommended for all libraries. -J. J. Hassett, Swarthmore College
Excerpts
Excerpts
José Palacios, his oldest servant, found him floating naked with his eyes open in the purifying waters of his bath and thought he had drowned. He knew this was one of the many ways the General meditated, but the ecstasy in which he lay drifting seemed that of a man no longer of this world. He did not dare come closer but called to him in a hushed voice, complying with the order to awaken him before five so they could leave at dawn. The General came out of his trance and saw in the half-light the clear blue eyes, the curly squirrel-colored hair, the impassive dignity of the steward who attended him every day and who held in his hand a cup of the curative infusion of poppies and gum arabic. The General's hands lacked strength when he grasped the handles of the tub, but he rose up from the medicinal waters in a dolphinlike rush that was surprising in so wasted a body. "Let's go," he said, "as fast as we can. No one loves us here." José Palacios had heard him say this so many times and on so many different occasions that he still did not believe it was true, even though the pack animals were ready in the stables and the members of the official delegation were beginning to assemble. In any event, he helped him to dry and draped the square poncho from the uplands over his naked body because the trembling of his hands made the cup rattle. Months before, while putting on a pair of chamois trousers he had not worn since his Babylonian nights in Lima, the General discovered he was losing height as well as weight. Even his nakedness was distinctive, for his body was pale and his face and hands seemed scorched by exposure to the weather. He had turned forty-six this past July, but his rough Caribbean curls were already ashen, his bones were twisted by premature old age, and he had deteriorated so much he did not seem capable of lasting until the following July. Yet his resolute gestures appeared to be those of a man less damaged by life, and he strode without stopping in a circle around nothing. He drank the tea in five scorching swallows that almost blistered his tongue, avoiding his own watery trail along the frayed rush mats on the floor, and it was as if he had drunk the magic potion of resurrection. But he did not say a word until five o'clock had sounded in the bell tower of the nearby cathedral. "Saturday, May 8, 1830, the Day of the Blessed Virgin, Mediatrix of all Grace," announced the steward. "It has been raining since three o'clock in the morning." "Since three o'clock in the morning of the seventeenth century," said the General, his voice still shaken by the bitter breath of insomnia. And he added, in all seriousness: "I didn't hear the roosters." "There are no roosters here," said José Palacios. "There's nothing here," said the General. "It's the land of the infidel." For they were in Santa Fe de Bogotá, city of the Holy Faith, two thousand six hundred meters above the level of the distant sea, and the cavernous bedroom with its bare walls, exposed to the icy winds that filtered through ill-fitting windows, was not the most favorable for anyone's health. José Palacios placed the basin of lather on the marble top of the dressing table, along with the red velvet case that held the shaving implements, all of golden metal. He put the small candleholder with its candle on a ledge near the mirror so the General would have enough light, and he brought the brazier to warm his feet. Then he handed him the spectacles with squared lenses and thin silver frames that he always carried for him in his jacket pocket. The General put them on and began to shave, guiding the razor with as much skill in his left hand as in his right, for his ambidexterity was natural to him, and he showed astonishing control of the same wrist that minutes before could not hold a cup. He finished shav Excerpted from The General and His Labyrinth by Gabriel García Márquez All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
