Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928-)

One Hundred Years of Solitude

• takes place in the fictional Colombian village of Macondo
• it is founded by Jose Arcadio Buendia, a strong-willed and impulsive leader who becomes deeply interested in the mysteries of the universe when a band of gypsies visits Macondo, led by Melquiades
• Macondo takes a role in the civil war, sending a militia led by Colonel Aureliano Buendia, Jose Arcadio's son
• While the colonel is gone, Jose Arcadio goes mad and must be tied to a tree. Acadio, his illegitimate grandchild, takes leadership of the town but becomes a brutal dictator.
• The Conservatives capture the town and Arcadio is shot by a firing squad.
• Colonel Aureliano avoids death multiple times until he signs a peace treaty. The town develops into a center of activity and foreigners begin a banana plantation near Macondo. The town prospers until a strike arises at the banana plantation and the national army is called in. The strikers are gunned down and thrown into the ocean.
• After the banana worker massacare, the town is saturated by heavy rains for almost five years. Ursula, Jose Arcadio's wife, says she is waiting for the rains to stop so she can die at last.
• The last member of the Buendia line, Aureliano Babilonia is born. He is left in solitude at the crumbling Buendia house where he studies the parchments of Melquiades. He has a love affair with his aunt which results in a son born with a pig's tail who is eaten by ants. 
• Aureliano finally deciphers the parchments and the house and town disintegrate into a whirlwind as he translates the parchments which contain the entire history of the Buendia family, as predicted by Melquiades. As he finishes translating, the entire town is obliterated from the world.