INSCRIBED BY GARCIA MARQUEZ AND TRANSLATOR GREGORY RABASSA

GARCIA MARQUEZ, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Harper & Row, (1970). Octavo, original green cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. $16,000.

First edition in English, first issue, of one of the most acclaimed novels of the post-war era, inscribed by García Márquez on the dedication page with a flourish: "Para Joel García, con un abrazo del otro García, Gabriel." Additionally inscribed on the title page by renowned translator Gregory Rabassa, quoting the last line of the novel: "…because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth. Gregory Rabassa."

"One of the best-known and highly esteemed works of Latin American magic realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude… allegorizes cosmic questions and literary concerns while remaining an absorbing story" (Barron, Fantasy and Horror 7-130). García Márquez's wife Mercedes "had to pawn her hair dryer and their electric heater to pay for the postage to mail the finished manuscript—in two separate lots, because they couldn't afford to mail the whole thing all at once—to his Argentine publisher, who printed 8000 copies. They sold out in a week… Although the Boom in Latin-American fiction was well under way, the popular response to One Hundred Years of Solitude was almost unimaginable… It is the most famous manifestation of the Boom, and García Márquez is the most celebrated of the prominent Boom writers" (Jon Lee Anderson). Pablo Neruda proclaimed it "the greatest achievement in Spanish literature since Don Quixote" (Klein, 26). In addition to translating several other novels by García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa also translated Julio Cortázar's masterpiece Rayuela [Hopscotch], and Mario Vargas Llosa's Conversation in the Cathedral. First issue, no number sequence on the verso of the last page of text; dust jacket first-issue, with exclamation point at the end of the first paragraph on the front flap.

Tiny staple holes on free endpapers; text and cloth clean and fine. Dust jacket with a bit of rubbing to spine, clean and bright and very nearly fine. A lovely and most desirable copy, inscribed by both the author and the translator.