One Hundred Years of Solitude

The story of the Buendía family across seven generations in the fictional town of Macondo, from its founding through its destruction, told in a style that treats impossibilities — a woman ascending to heaven while folding laundry, a rainstorm lasting four years, a child born with a pig's tail — as everyday events. García Márquez's novel is the defining work of magical realism and one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century, a book about memory, power, love, and the loneliness of family history repeating itself until it ends.