Nobel Laureate Gabriel "Gabo" García Márquez was born in the municipality of Aracataca, in Colombia's Department of Magdalena in the spring of 1927 (Martin 12). Nearly one hundred years earlier and fifty-five miles to the north in the city of Santa Marta, the former President of Gran Colombia and liberator of the future countries of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia lay dying. Márquez had grown up on the legends of Simón Bolívar and he knew the Magdalena River intimately from his childhood. After reading fellow writer Alvaro Mutis' partially completed El Último Rostro" [The Last Face] he requested and received permission from Mutis to undertake his own writing of the piece. As Márquez describes in MyThanks at the conclusion of his novel: "the story seemed so ripe, and its style and tone so polished (Márquez 271)." In his writing, Márquez painstakingly captures the intimate details of a man he felt history had cast into a one-dimensional mold. When asked about the vividly imagined intimate details attributed to Bolívar Márquez simply replied, "No one ever said in Bolívar's biographies that he sang or was constipated but historians don't say these things because they think they are not important (Plimpton web)." In The General in His Labyrinth, Márquez envisions a world not unlike his own and a man not unlike himself. The major themes of Márquez's novel involves world politics and the fate of nations, figural labyrinths of the mind and body, and explores the concept of fate and love. .
Plot Summary.
The novel is written as an historical account of the last days of Símon Bolívar, although he is only mentioned by name one time at the end of the first chapter. Instead the protagonist is simply called, "The General". Written in the third person the story begins on May 8th, 1830 with his departure from Santa Fe de Bogotá after having been ousted from power.