Recommendations based on One Hundred Years of Solitudeby Gabriel García Márquez

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  1. Love in the Time of Cholera

    by Gabriel García Márquez
    An epic love story spanning decades, exploring the power of true love.

    The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's ... (Wikipedia)

  2. The Unbearable Lightness of Being

    by Milan Kundera
    A story of love and loss in a politically turbulent Czechoslovakia.

    In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and ... (Goodreads)

  3. Blindness

    by José Saramago
    A society is plunged into chaos when everyone suddenly loses their sight.

    Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows. The novel follows the misfortune of a ... (Wikipedia)

  4. The Name of the Rose

    by Umberto Eco
    A Franciscan friar investigates a series of murders in a medieval monastery, uncovering a sinister plot.

    In 1327, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk , a Benedictine novice travelling under his protection, arrive at a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological ... (Wikipedia)

  5. Don Quixote

    by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
    An aging knight's adventures and misadventures, filled with chivalry, honor, and satire.

    Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in ... (Goodreads)

  6. The Brothers Karamazov

    by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    A philosophical exploration of morality, faith, and family dynamics among a group of brothers.

    The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich ... (Goodreads)

  7. The Trial

    by Franz Kafka
    A man is arrested and put on trial for a crime that remains unclear throughout the novel.

    On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., the chief cashier of a bank, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. Josef is not ... (Wikipedia)

  8. The House of the Spirits

    by Isabel Allende
    Epic family saga spanning generations, exploring the power of love and the impact of politics.

    The story starts with the del Valle family, focusing upon the youngest and the oldest daughters of the family, Clara and Rosa. The youngest daughter, Clara del Valle, has paranormal powers and keeps ... (Wikipedia)

  9. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

    by Patrick Süskind
    A murder mystery set in 18th century France, exploring the depths of human obsession.

    An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of ... (Goodreads)

  10. Heart of Darkness

    by Joseph Conrad
    A journey into the depths of the human psyche, exploring the darkness of colonialism.

    Aboard the Nellie , anchored in the River Thames near Gravesend , Charles Marlow tells his fellow sailors how he became captain of a river steamboat for an ivory trading company. As a child, Marlow ... (Wikipedia)

  11. War and Peace

    by Leo Tolstoy
    Epic tale of war, peace, and love, focusing on the lives of five aristocratic families.

    The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg , at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and confidante to the dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna . Many of the main characters ... (Wikipedia)

  12. The Waves

    by Virginia Woolf
    Inner musings of six characters in search of individual identity, expressed through the ebb and flow of the sea.

    The novel follows its six narrators from childhood through adulthood. Woolf is concerned with the individual consciousness and the ways in which multiple consciousnesses can weave together. Bernard ... (Wikipedia)

  13. The Aleph and Other Stories

    by Jorge Luis Borges
    A collection of stories featuring metaphysical and philosophical explorations of the human condition.

    Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight, he takes us inside the minds of an ... (Goodreads)

  14. The Autumn of the Patriarch

    by Gabriel García Márquez
    A powerful tyrant's downfall as he is manipulated by his inner circle and loses his grip on power.

    One of Gabriel Garcia Marquez'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, ... (Goodreads)

  15. Chronicle of a Death Foretold

    by Gabriel García Márquez
    A murder mystery narrated by the townspeople and tracing the events leading up to the crime.

    The non-linear story, told by an anonymous narrator, begins with the morning of Santiago Nasar's death. The reader learns that Santiago lives with his mother, Placida Linero; the cook, Victoria ... (Wikipedia)

  16. The Remains of the Day

    by Kazuo Ishiguro
    A butler reflects on his past, grappling with the lost opportunities of a life devoted to service.

    The novel tells, in first-person narration , the story of Stevens, an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington (who is recently deceased, and whom Stevens ... (Wikipedia)

  17. Kafka on the Shore

    by Haruki Murakami
    A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the boundaries between the real and surreal.

    Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between both plots, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters. The odd-numbered chapters tell the 15-year-old ... (Wikipedia)

  18. Mrs. Dalloway

    by Virginia Woolf
    A day in the life of a high-society woman, delving into her inner thoughts and feelings.

    Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about ... (Wikipedia)

  19. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

    by Junot Díaz
    An exploration of love, identity, and the power of fate in a family's struggles and triumphs.

    Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao, a bastardization of Oscar Wilde ) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a ... (Wikipedia)

  20. Sophie's World

    by Jostein Gaarder
    A journey of philosophical discovery told through a young girl's exploration of the world.

    Sophie Amundsen is a 14-year-old girl who lives in Lillesand , Norway. The book begins with Sophie receiving two messages in her mailbox and a postcard addressed to Hilde Møller Knag. Afterwards, she ... (Wikipedia)

  21. Middlemarch

    by George Eliot
    A grand narrative of life in a small English town, exploring the lives of its inhabitants.

    Middlemarch centres on the lives of residents of Middlemarch, a fictitious Midlands town, from 1829 onwards – the years up to the 1832 Reform Act . The narrative is variably considered to consist of ... (Wikipedia)

  22. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

    by Haruki Murakami
    A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the inner and outer worlds.

    The first part, "The Thieving Magpie", begins with the narrator, Toru Okada, a low-key and unemployed lawyer's assistant, being tasked by his wife, Kumiko, to find their missing cat. Kumiko suggests ... (Wikipedia)

  23. East of Eden

    by John Steinbeck
    Exploration of the timeless struggle between good and evil, set against a backdrop of a family saga.

    In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas ... (Goodreads)

  24. The Iliad

    by Homer
    Epic tale of the Trojan War, depicting heroism and tragedy.

    Dating to the ninth century B.C., Homer’s timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, ... (Goodreads)

  25. Beloved

    by Toni Morrison
    A haunting story of loss and resilience in the aftermath of slavery.

    Beloved begins in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio , where the protagonist Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman, has been living with her eighteen-year-old daughter Denver at 124 Bluestone Road. The book ... (Wikipedia)

  26. A Confederacy of Dunces

    by John Kennedy Toole
    A satirical tale of an eccentric slacker's misadventures in New Orleans.

    Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found, here, "A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles ... (Goodreads)

  27. Swann's Way

    by Marcel Proust
    Autobiographical novel tracing the narrator's reminiscences of an aristocratic upbringing.

    Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar ... (Goodreads)

  28. Pedro Páramo

    by Juan Rulfo
    A man returns to his hometown in search of his father, discovering the ghostly inhabitants.

    A classic of Mexican modern literature about a haunted village. As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another ... (Goodreads)

  29. Waiting for Godot

    by Samuel Beckett
    Two men wait for a mysterious figure who never arrives, reflecting on their lives and existence.

    Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, have met near a leafless tree. Estragon spent the previous night lying in a ditch and receiving a beating from some unnamed assailants. The two men discuss a variety ... (Wikipedia)

  30. The Master and Margarita

    by Mikhail Bulgakov
    A fantastical, satirical examination of Soviet life, intersecting with the supernatural.

    The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland . He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely-dressed valet; Behemoth , ... (Wikipedia)