Úrsula Iguarán
Matriarch whose memory is the town’s longest weather.
Postwar & Contemporary · Novel · 1967
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez
The Buendía family founds Macondo and lives a century of loves, wars, and repeating names until a parchment is finally read. Legend and company scrip share a town.
Magical realism
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
Characters
Colonel Aureliano Buendía
Maker of little gold fishes and endless wars.
Melquíades
Gypsy sage whose manuscript is the book we are reading.
Themes
Repetition
Names return; history refuses to learn.
Solitude
Each Buendía is an island that still determines the archipelago.
Motifs
First wonders that later harden into politics.
A family that cannot read its own prophecy until it is too late.