Solitude & the Buendías: Reading One Hundred Years of Solitude

A friend told me she tried reading it three times but couldn’t finish it. With those words echoing in my ears, I hesitantly downloaded Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude on my Kindle – determined to read it before watching the Netflix adaptation (which, they say, stays true to the book).

Set in the fictional town of Macondo, this sweeping tale spans seven generations of the Buendía family. Woven through Márquez’s signature magical realism, the story captures the essence of Colombia’s history – colonialism, dictatorship, modernisation, war – all while intertwining them with personal themes of love, sin, loneliness, fate, and the cyclical nature of life and solitude.

There are ghosts. There are revolutions. And there are countless characters (many with the same names!) who move through time in loops, not lines. Truth blends with myth, the dead walk with the living, and time folds in on itself.

It wasn’t an easy read, but around the 100-page mark, it slowly began to make sense. The writing is surreal, funny in flashes, but mostly intense – and so full of meaning, layers of symbolism. Confusing, dark. But so rich, so poetic.

This passage, for me, captures the soul of the book:

“Everywhere he met adolescents who looked at him with his own eyes, who spoke to him with his own voice, who greeted him with the same mistrust with which he greeted them, and who said they were his sons. He felt scattered about, multiplied, and more solitary than ever.”

That sums up the book – a journey into solitude, identity, and the eternal repetition of history. It’s not a book you can casually flip through, it’s a book you must read in solitude, away from the noise, to truly understand its beauty – it demands your time, focus, and complete withdrawal from the world. The experience is rich, unforgettable. And when you reach the final pages, it feels like time has both stood still and come full circle.

No wonder this book has stayed on must-read lists for over 50 years – a modern classic that lives up to every bit of its legend.

P.S. Read Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude before watching the Netflix adaptation (if you can).