The General in His Labyrinth
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| Author | Gabriel García Márquez |
|---|---|
| Original title | El general en su laberinto |
| Translator | Edith Grossman |
| Country | Colombia |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre(s) | Historical |
| Publisher | Editorial La Oveja Negra |
| Publication date | 1989 |
| Media type | Hardcover and Paperback |
| Pages | 284 (hardcover edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 958-06-0006-6 (hardcover edition) |
The General in His Labyrinth (original Spanish title: El general en su laberinto) is a novel written by Gabriel García Márquez and was published in 1989. It is a fictionalized telling of the last seven months in the life of Simón Bolívar, the Great Liberator of Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador from Spanish rule. In this time (1830), Bolívar travels from the high Andes to the Caribbean coastline of Colombia.
Plot
The book is mostly given over to long recollections of Bolívar's personal history, and his fall from glory over the course of a few years coupled with his physical debilitation. It begins near the end of his career, when he still carries a small amount of power and respect. The people of the lands he has liberated have now turned against him, scrawling anti-Bolívar graffiti and even throwing human waste at him. He leaves Bogotá with the few officials still faithful to him and heads toward Honda, after which he hopes to go to the seaport to leave for Europe.
On the road, Bolívar continues to be unintentionally humiliated. His aide-de-camp, more important looking than Bolívar, is consistently mistaken for the Liberator. The great banquets people prepare, not knowing he has resigned, are wasted because the President can only digest corn mush.
He also meets Miranda Lyndsay, a woman he met in Jamaica. He stays a night with her, and comes home to find his bodyguard dead. He had fallen into Bolívar's bed and had been stabbed in what was planned to be an assassination.
In the end, Bolívar cannot leave South America. His ties to it are too strong. Instead, he dies sickly and in poverty, a shadow of the man that liberated much of the continent.
Sources
Adams, Robert M. New York Review of Books 37, no. 15 (11 October 1990): 17-18.
| The work of Gabriel García Márquez | |
|---|---|
| Novels In Evil Hour, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Love in the Time of Cholera, The General in His Labyrinth, Of Love and Other Demons | |
| Short stories: Leaf Storm, No One Writes to the Colonel, Big Mama's Funeral, The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and her Heartless Grandmother, Strange Pilgrims, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, For The Sake of A Country Within Reach Of The Children, Memories of My Melancholy Whores | |
| Non-fiction The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, Clandestine in Chile:The Adventures of Miguel Littin, News of a Kidnapping, Living to Tell the Tale | |
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