One Hundred Years of Solitude

The novel chronicles a family's struggle and the history of their fictional town, Macondo. Although the title implies that the story spans one hundred years, it is unclear exactly how much time the narrative covers. This ambiguity contributes to the novel's treatment of time, as there is a notion that time lapses, repeats, changes speeds, or stops altogether at different parts of the story, and that all the events in some sense happen simultaneously.

Like many other novels by Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude crosses genres, combining elements of romance, history, and fantasy. The narrative style of the novel was especially praised and extensively studied—ostensibly objective but often manifestly ridiculous, it combined García Márquez's experience as a journalist with the literary style of magical realism and extensive uses of metaphors and irony.