When this novel by Colombia's Nobel laureate first appeared in Spanish in 1989 it caused a heated controversy among the author's Latin American compatriots. In general, Latin Americans tended to be infuriated by the worldly and extremely realistic treatment of Simon Bolivar, their "Great Liberator" and hero in the campaign against the Spanish in the last century's wars for independence. The novel recounts General Bolivar's final journey down the Magdalena River as he prepares to leave a continent that has rejected his dream of unification. In narrating the general's journey down the river and into eventual exile, Garcia Marquez masterfully weaves memory with scenes from the present, juxtaposing the general's own existential labyrinth with that awaiting the continent he had hoped to unify. This text, like many of its predecessors, is an extraordinary study of the solitude of power, of the deterioration of body and spirit, of loss and disillusion, and of the inevitability of death. In it Garcia Marquez has created one of his most intriguing literary characters. The translation by Edith Grossman, who also did Love in the Time of Cholera (CH, Sep'88), is superb. Recommended for all libraries. -J. J. Hassett, Swarthmore College

As the popularly agreed-upon preeminent Latin American storyteller, it is not unexpected that Garcia Márquez would take a turn at telling the epic story of Simón Bolivar, the Great Liberator. What is unexpected, somewhat, is that he would novelize the biography so slackly, dully, obligatorily: the book seems like a homework assignment for a Nobelist. We get a Bolivar here at his last: renouncing the presidency of Colombia, leaving Bogotá to journey along the Magdalena River, all the while clearly dying and putting his (and a continent's) final business in order. Garcia Márquez flashes back silkily to past loves and treacheries and alliances and personal suavities, but it's all done as though behind a screen: even Bolivar's prodigious erotic life--which threatens to burst through into the sort of high-relief gorgeousness that Márquezian prose can be at its best--remains inert and spalled. Bolivar comes across as a man of dignity and farsightedness, but more tangled inside the history he developed than defined by it. And the book seems to feel it must responsibly, officially register certain historical landmarks every so often, in dull prose: ""His officers may never have imagined to what extent this distribution of benefits joined their destinies. For better or worse, all of them would share the rest of their lives. . .fighting at the side of Commander Pedro Carujo in a military adventure intended to achieve the Bolivarist idea of integration."" Dutiful but dry as dust. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Written in cogent, measured prose, moving to a somber internal rhythm, this short, historically based novel depicts the last days of Simon Bolivar, aka the Liberator of South America. Aged 46 in 1830, prematurely aged, weary and moribund, the General (as he is referred to throughout), once the hero and president of the republic of nations he freed from Spanish domination, is now past his glory. He is wandering destitute, having renounced the presidency and announced his imminent exile--an act he keeps postponing in the hopes that he will be returned to power. Widely reviled, the object of assassination attempts, suffering from chronic insomnia and daily fevers, the General is cynical, bitter and mercurial, frustrated by his failing powers but unable to face his impending death (``How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!'' he cries). In flashbacks that integrate capsule portraits of other historical figures important in Bolivar's life, Garcia Marquez invests the narrative with substance and veracity, but finds little opportunity to unleash his remarkable imagination; thus the novel lacks the incandescent quality of One Hundred Years of Solitude and other of his works of magical realism. The author himself regrets the lack of humor in what he refers to as ``the horror of this book.'' Readers will be impressed, but not beguiled. 150,000 first printing; first serial to the New Yorker; BOMC main selection. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved