The General in His Labyrinth: A Novel.

MARQUEZ, Gabriel Garcia.

$600.00

Item Number: 137055

New York: Everyman's Library, 2004.

First Everyman’s Library edition of this “fascinating tour de force and a moving tribute to an extraordinary man” (Margaret Atwood, New York Times Book Review). Octavo, original cloth, pictorial endpapers, ribbon bound in. Boldly signed by Gabriel Garcia Marquez on the half-title page. Translated and introduced by Edith Grossman. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket photograph by Arici Graziano. Jacket design by Barbara de Wilde and Abby Weintraub.

Simon Bolívar, known in six Latin American countries as the Liberator, is one of the most revered heroes of the western hemisphere; in García Márquez’s brilliant reimagining he is magnificently flawed as well. The novel follows Bolívar 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. “Passage after passage shines with the brilliance of García Márquez…He has invented some of the magic characters of our age. His General, however, is not only magic, but real" (The Wall Street Journal).