One of Gabriel García Márquez's most intricate and ambitious works, The Autumn of the Patriarch is a brilliant tale of a Caribbean tyrant and the corruption of power.
From charity to deceit, benevolence to violence, fear of God to extreme cruelty, the dictator of The Autumn of the Patriarch embodies the best and the worst of human nature. Gabriel García Márquez, the renowned master of magical realism, vividly portrays the dying tyrant caught in the prison of his own dictator-ship. Employing an innovative, dreamlike style, and overflowing with symbolic descriptions, the novel transports the reader to a world that is at once fanciful and real.
Gabriel García Márquez was born in 1927 in the town of Aracataca, Columbia. Latin America's preeminent man of letters, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. García Márquez began his writing career as a journalist and is the author of numerous other works of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels The Autumn of the Patriarch and Love in the Time of Cholera, and the autobiography Living to Tell the Tale. There has been resounding acclaim for his life's work since his death in April 2014.
"Majestic...Superb...A stunning portrait of hte archetype, the pathological fascist tyrant." -- New York Times Book Review
"Majestic...Superb...a stunning portrait of the archetype, the pathological fascist tyrant. Garc'a M rquez is as exorbitant as Melville and Dostoyevsky." -- New York Times Book Review
"The Autumn of the Patriarch mines one of the darkest veins in Latin American political history. The central character is a composite of Trujillos, Batistas, and Somozas. His is a genius at the barren politics of survival, capable and guilty of the most savage brutality, a lonely monster who shuffles through his palace every night, checking the locks, looking for assassins, lighting a lantern for a quick exit." -- America
"Majestic...Superb...a stunning portrait of the archetype, the pathological fascist tyrant. Garcia Mcrquez is as exorbitant as Melville and Dostoyevsky." -- New York Times Book Review