Whitman College Magazine Winter 2021

‘One Hundred
Years’ in
One Minute
Gabriel García Márquez’s “One
Hundred Years of Solitude” (“Cien
años de soledad”), published
in 1967 and set in Macondo,
follows seven generations of
the Buendía family through a
century of upheaval. A fouryear
rainstorm, a lover followed
by yellow butterflies, a plague
of insomnia and other strange
occurrences mark the novel as a
seminal work of magical realism.
What took García Márquez 15
years to write has been translated
into more than 45 languages,
making it the most translated
literary work in Spanish after “Don
Quixote.” It is among the top 30
bestselling novels of all time, with
an estimated 50 million copies
sold—and likely more on the
horizon, as Netflix prepares to
release a limited series based on
the novel. García Marquez’s sons
are the executive producers.
The book was also a turning
point for García Márquez, who
went on to win a Nobel Prize
in Literature in 1982.
“This novel cut his life into two
parts,” Santana-Acuña says.
“Before it he was a writer unknown
beyond small literary circles in
Mexico and Colombia, and after that
novel he became a global celebrity.”
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