"[One Hundred Years of Solitude] is one of those rare bestsellers that has real literary value. It's the story of a family, and is full of love, violence and madness. García Márquez only deals with events. And his characters are so solitary, despite many of them living together, that García Márquez doesn't describe their thoughts: he himself felt the insuperable solitude of that whole breed of lunatics, poets, revolutionaries, bandits, and beautiful women, all caught up in a relentless flow of action replete with poetry, humor, and sublime verbal magic." The poet Eliane Zagury has made a magnificent translation (there's not a trace of foreignness in the Portuguese)..."