But right up there is the incredible way that García Márquez takes the complicated history of Colombia – all the way from just after Bolivar liberated the colony from Spanish rule to the middle of the 20th century – and conveys it to us through the eyes of one crazily outsized, doomed family, and an equally messed up fictional town. So what exactly makes this book so universally admired? There's probably a long list, what with the beautiful use of language, the amazing imagery, and the peculiar style. Pretty cool, right? You try writing a world-renowned masterpiece in nine months and let us know how it goes. And just like that, Gabriel García Márquez becomes one of the world's most famous living authors. It gets translated into a bazillion languages. It wins him the Nobel Prize for literature. Nine months later, out comes One Hundred Years of Solitude – one of the most important books of the century. He begs his landlord and local stores for credit to keep him and his family going. The journalist turns the car around, drives home, and sells the car for money. Suddenly, the idea hits him full-on: a dead-end town an endlessly repeating, cyclical, completely self-involved family and above all, a narrator who doesn't give any kind of overarching ethical commentary on the insanity of the characters or on the supernatural and fantastical things being described. All his life, he's wanted to write about growing up in his grandparents' house, but he's never really gotten a handle on just how to get across the weird mix of superstition, knowledge, religion, personal stories, and global history that surrounded him. How's this for an awesome origin myth? In 1966, a moderately successful journalist is driving his family to Acapulco.

100 days in solitude book