One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabo is the affectionate nickname
of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Why One hundred years of solitude ?

He is the most famous writer in Colombia; his face is on the ten thousand Colombian pesos bills accompanied by butterflies representing his most famous book.One hundred years of solitude, this book has accompanied my entire school career, and we have always had it in my home library. This book is very famous because it begins with a literary genre called magical realism. However, I have selected this book because it is set in Colombia, and it has been very present during my life. My first experience with this book was at an early age, which was disastrous because it is a book that is tedious to read for someone of that age, with a vast number of pages and a challenging language to understand for a 12-year-old girl.

After a few years, the book returned to my hands, and I remember that During the reading, my imagination could fly to the different scenarios, such as the imaginary place of Macondo inspired by the Colombian colonial towns. As the title of One Hundred Years of Solitude indicates, it is a novel based on how the characters evade their thoughts so as not to sink into their loneliness and misery, creating an imaginary world, thus fleeing the Spanish civil war and the problems of living in society. Of the time, each character narrates his own story, involving us in the unreal world of Macondo. This book reminds me of the book Don Quixote de La Mancha. The reason is for the imagination of the characters and the way to evade reality.

During this project, the most fun part was looking for the hidden information in the book and finding the small details, for example, the work behind it, how long it took Gabo to do it and all the sacrifices he had to make to carry it out with this project, such as selling his car to be able to finance the months that he was not going to work to be able to write the book. The curious fact is that the book was printed for the first time in Argentina, and the original cover was not illustrated on time, so they had to find an alternative for the first edition.

You can find more details of my design and research process on this whimsical page.