The Autumn of the Patriarch

Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote Autumn of the Patriarch in 1975. I bought it in 1982. It’s been lying on my bookshelf ever since. I tried reading it twice in the past, starting at the beginning and getting a little further into the book with each attempt before giving up.

The reason that one simply cannot continue from where one leaves off (after an extended break from reading) is that Autumn does not have a linear, plot-based structure, with clear chronological markers to which one can refer. Rather, it is a literary version of the Grand Rapids: a relentlessly flowing narrative, with neither paragraphing nor punctuation (except for full stops), and sentences that run into pages. Marquez employs stream-of-consciousness to express interior monologue and fluidly switches points of view, in the process turning the reader into an omniscient presence, privy to the thoughts of the protagonist and the other characters in the novel.

Autumn is divided into six sections that tell the same story (with varying perspectives) of a fictional Latin American dictator and the revolutions, intrigues, assassinations, aborted coups, and atrocities that attend his reign. The protagonist is a composite of real-life dictators, including Gustavo Rojas Pinilla  of Marquez’s native Colombia, Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain, and Venezuela's Juan Vicente Gómez.  

Needless to say, Autumn offers generous servings of magic realism, which brought Marquez into the spotlight with his opus One Hundred Years of Solitude. Autumn, however, is high-octane Marquez: bizarre, mesmerising, ironic, and grandiose. It is a wild, rollercoaster ride down the labyrinthine pathways of one of the greatest minds of twentieth century literature. You will be shaken and stirred – perhaps mildly disorientated – but you will never forget the trip.