Last week, Netflix released a teaser on its adaption of Gabriel García Márquez’s literary masterpiece and everyone was hooked. With its stunning magical realist details, the novel focuses on a multi-generational plot about the Buendía family in the fictitious town of Macondo.
Now that the Latin American literary classic will soon be available to watch on Netflix as a sixteen-episode series, an extended audience will be able to live through Márquez’s mythical storytelling.
The book has been considered a masterpiece and the Netflix adaption is being called the most ambitious Latin American production, so there is a certain percentage of individuals who already cannot wait to watch it.
However, this blog is for the ones who never got around to reading their copy of Cien Años de Soledad from a writer sharing a similar origin as theirs. Do not worry, we have got you covered. We will cover a short intro of the book and discuss some reasons on why should you be excited about it too, and then you can decide for yourself.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Book
As a fellow Latin American (Columbian to be specific), Gabriel García Márquez is a prominent name in Latin American literature. If you search autor latinoamericano on Google, the first name that will come up will be Márquez’s.
One Hundred Years of Solitude was originally written in Spanish but went on to become so famous that it was translated into 46 languages and won Máarquez a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
The book features the seven generations of the Buendía family in the mythical town of Macondo through which Márquez was able to define the literary genre of magical realism. José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán leave their hometown and establish Macondo, after José dreams about it. Macondo houses seven generations of the Buendía family and the members are shown to be incapable or unwilling to leave the town isolated from the outside world.
The story of the Buendía family is depicted through magical elements and metaphors and Latin American history is weaved into it. Macodo being originally dreamt of as a city of glass, by the family patriarch, is a metaphor for its eventual fate.
The novel is said to be a linear archive of Latin American history, with Macondo being the Latin America that was discovered by explorers.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Show
The novel can often be considered complex by casual or infrequent readers because of its various characters who are products of familiar incest and have similar names too. Also, the story-telling transcends the bounds of time and space, which requires the readers to have a keen attention to detail. Therefore, I think Netflix’s announcement of the show comes as good news for anyone who found themselves unable to make it through the end of the book.
You will still be able to connect to the work of a Latin-American author. According to the teaser, which garnered 1M views in four days, the visual depiction of the novel will still incorporate magical elements mixed into the realist world. It will feature the Buendía family’s characters living through their trials in the town of Macondo which witnesses seasons of prosperity, growth, destruction, and desolation.
From the teaser we also know the show will follow the non-linear progression of time as we see José Arcadio Buendía remembering the ‘distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice’ which is the famed opening line of the novel.
Directed by Laura Mora and Alex García López, the show features all the quintessential elements incorporated by Márquez in the book. The show was filmed in Columbia, with constant support from the famed Latin American author’s family.
It is coming to Netflix, sometime later this year as the date has not been announced yet. For a seamless viewing experience, we suggest subscribing to a good internet provider like Hughesnet so that you will not have to face disruptions as you watch the One Hundred Years of Solitude. You can contact Hughesnet servicio al cliente to know more about their internet packages and deals being offered in your area. We recommend Hughesnet because of our terrible experience watching TV shows online with other providers until we finally got this satellite-based internet connection because of its seamless connectivity.
Coming back to the Netflix adaption of the show answering the question asked in the beginning, here are some reasons why you should watch it:
- A show adapted from a magical realist novel, visually depicting the magical elements in a real-world setting, is going to be an interesting ride.
- One of the main themes of One Hundred Years of Solitude is isolation. It is stimulating how individuals living in a community can still be isolated and how that solitude makes them selfish.
- The show features the same narrative style as the book which is an interesting mix of third-person narration and stream of consciousness. Temporal and spatial boundaries are effortlessly blurred and yet each character holds its individuality.
- It is a metaphor for Latin American history and touches on many significant events that shaped it, through events and individual elements.
Wrapping Up
One Hundred Years of Solitude, the book or the TV show, is a great medium for Latin American audiences to connect to their collective history, from the colonial conquest and the subsequent isolation of the colonies to the ‘image’ of these colonies developed by the printing press. We have high hopes associated with the book’s Netflix adaptation, as a mode for those who reconnect with their Latin American history, or simply want to learn more.
