Description: Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Retrospect provides a multifaceted, backward glance at García Márquez and his output as a writer. The essays examine his cultural background and influence, take a close look at One Hundred Years of Solitude as well as at several of his later works, and consider his relationship to film and theater.
Brief description: Michael Wood is a historian, filmmaker, and broadcaster who has written several bestselling books and made well over one hundred documentary films which are regularly seen on PBS. Some of these book-and-documentary projects include In Search of the Dark Ages, In Search of the Trojan War, and In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great. A Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester, he is also a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, the Royal Historical Society, and the Society of Antiquaries. He recently received the British Academy President's Medal for services to history and outreach.
Review Quotes:
"[T]he best homage to a great author is to imagine ways to read his work anew. Gene Bell-Villada's timely selection of essays does exactly that: it sheds new light on a multifaceted writer that still manages to stimulate the critical imagination of readers from around the world. . . . Among its many virtues, this book reminds us that García Márquez embodied a unique pleasure in the act of writing. Most of the collection's papers share this "joie d'ecrire," as they combine rigor, poetry, and a dose of playful wit that suits the analysis of a lyrical mamagallista like Gabo. Among them, Bell-Villada's own good-humored introduction is unparalleled. This tone allows many of the texts to both celebrate the writer and deal with him in an intellectually nuanced way that, instead of solidifying the icy statue of the canonic author, brings a renewed warmth to his work and makes him, once again, our contemporary." --Hispanofila
"Gene Bell-Villada's new collection of essays provides much for general readers, students and specialists alike, who are offered an array of critical approaches with which to spar, ranging from the contextual, biographical, literary and literary-historical to the ecocritical, demythifying and on occasion densely theoretical. Particularly welcome is the volume's emphasis on García Márquez's later writing." --Clive Griffin, Emeritus Fellow, Trinity College, University of Oxford "This exemplary collection of essays is illuminating, ample, accessible, and ultimately essential for understanding how García Márquez is read today." --Randolph D. Pope, University of Virginia