Genre: magical realism
Stars from Goodreads: 4.04
Stars from me: 5
Available on Amazon

As soon as I opened the book, I recognised the sensation, the feeling you get when you are reading a book where something surreal is being presented as ordinary. Soon I became sure it was written by somebody who was copying Gabriel García Márquez. I usually despise the impostors. This time, though, I didn’t want the imitator to stop. It was good, authentic.

This is selfish but when Gabriel García Márquez passed away, my first thought was: One Hundred Years of Solitude will never happen again. I felt orphaned. But now, here it was, a mystical world, flowing from the pages, resurrected. The resemblance was so strong it made me want to cry.

I then did my research on the book and quickly discovered that I got the connection right, but mixed up the sequence. Juan Rulfo was not copying Gabriel García Márquez. He wrote Pedro Paramo long before One Hundred Years of Solitude even existed. Márquez got a copy of Pedro Paramo and loved it so much, he learned it by heart, “forwards and backwards”, as he said. That was Pedro Paramo that inspired Márquez to create One Hundred Years of Solitude. I was not reading an impostor but a predecessor. Gabriel García Márquez opened the doors that Juan Rulfo had found.

If you love One Hundred Years of Solitude, read Pedro Paramo and meet your beloved ghosts again.