The Autumn of the Patriarch

The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez debuted in Spain in 1975. The English translation published in 1976. Márquez’s most notable work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, earned him a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982 and reflects his distinct magical realist style, an artistic genre first recognized in literature in predominantly Latin American writing during the 1940s. The Autumn of the Patriarch, published seven years later, also features Márquez’s magical style and fantastical prose. The novel is a dance with language; sentences and scenes run together—sometimes for three pages at a time—to reveal the limitlessness of power as it courses through men, women, society, and land.

This study guide uses the Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition published in 2006 and translated by Gregory Rabassa.

Content Warning: This study guide discusses murder and sexual assault.

Plot Summary

The General of the Universe, dictator of an unnamed city in the Caribbean, is dead in his office. But the unnamed narrators who find him aren’t convinced it could be the General, partly because of legend but also because he already died once before. In the early days of his regime, the General found a citizen,

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