Salman Rushdie's most ambitious and accomplished novel, sure to be hailed as his masterpiece.At the beginning of this stunning novel, Vina Apsara, a famous and much-loved singer, is caught up in a devastating earthquake and never seen again by human eyes. This is her story, and that of Ormus Cama, the lover who finds, loses, seeks, and again finds her, over and over, throughout his own extraordinary life in music. Their epic romance is narrated by Ormus's childhood friend and Vina's sometime lover, her "back-door man," the photographer Rai, whose astonishing voice, filled with stories, images, myths, anger, wisdom, humor, and love, is perhaps the book's true hero. Telling the story of Ormus and Vina, he finds that he is also revealing his own truths: his human failings, his immortal longings. He is a man caught up in the loves and quarrels of the age's goddesses and gods, but dares to have ambitions of his own. And lives to tell the tale.Around these three, the uncertain world itself is beginning to tremble and break. Cracks and tears have begun to appear in the fabric of the real. There are glimpses of abysses below the surfaces of things. The Ground Beneath Her Feet is Salman Rushdie's most gripping novel and his boldest imaginative act, a vision of our shaken, mutating times, an engagement with the whole of what is and what might be, an account of the intimate, flawed encounter between the East and the West, a brilliant remaking of the myth of Orpheus, a novel of high (and low) comedy, high (and low) passions, high (and low) culture. It is a tale of love, death, and rock 'n' roll.

Saleem Sinai was born at midnight, the midnight of India's independence, and found himself mysteriously "handcuffed to history" by the coincidence. He is one of 1,001 children born at the midnight hour, each of them endowed with an extraordinary talent—and whose privilege and curse it is to be both master and victims of their times. Through Saleem's gifts—inner ear and wildly sensitive sense of smell—we are drawn into a fascinating family saga set against the vast, colourful background of the India of the 20th century.

Just before dawn one winter's morning, a hijacked jetliner explodes above the English Channel. Through the falling debris, two figures, Gibreel Farishta, the biggest star in India, and Saladin Chamcha, an expatriate returning from his first visit to Bombay in fifteen years, plummet from the sky, washing up on the snow-covered sands of an English beach, and proceed through a series of metamorphoses, dreams, and revelations. --back cover

Collected here are twenty-six of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most brilliant and enchanting short stories, presented in the chronological order of their publication in Spanish from three volumes: Eyes of a Blue Dog, Big Mama's Funeral, and The Incredible and Sad Tale of lnnocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother. Combining mysticism, history, and humor, the stories in this collection span more than two decades, illuminating the development of Marquez's prose and exhibiting the themes of family, poverty, and death that resound throughout his fiction.

On her twelfth birthday, Sierva Maria, the only child of a decaying noble family in an eighteenth-century South American seaport, is bitten by a rabid dog. Believed to be possessed, she is brought to a convent for observation. And into her cell stumbles Father Cayetano Delaura, who has already dreamed about a girl with hair trailing after her like a bridal train. As he tends to her with holy water and sacramental oils, Delaura feels something shocking begin to occur. He has fallen in love, and it isn't long until Sierva Maria joins him in his fevered misery. Unsettling and indelible, Of Love and Other Demons is an evocative, majestic tale of the most universal experiences known to woman and man.

One of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most intricate and ambitious works, The Autumn of the Patriarch is a brilliant tale of a Caribbean tyrant and the corruption of power.From charity to deceit, benevolence to violence, fear of God to extreme cruelty, the dictator of The Autumn of the Patriarch embodies the best but also the worst of human nature. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the renowned master of magical realism, vividly portrays the dying tyrant caught in the prison of his own dictatorship. Employing an innovative, dreamlike style, and overflowing with symbolic descriptions, the novel transports the reader to a world that is at once fanciful and vividly real.

The brilliant, bestselling, landmark novel that tells the story of the Buendia family, and chronicles the irreconcilable conflict between the desire for solitude and the need for love—in rich, imaginative prose that has come to define an entire genre known as "magical realism."

A man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place twenty-seven years earlier, determined to get to the bottom of the story. Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to her parents. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover; and her twin brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Nasar for dishonoring their sister.Yet if everyone knew the murder was going to happen, why did no one intervene to try and stop it? The more that is learned, the less is understood, and as the story races to its inexplicable conclusion, an entire society--not just a pair of murderers—is put on trial.

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is heartbroken, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs—yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

A retired colonel, a small rooster, and a seventy five year patience.In a desolate shantytown in the middle of nowhere, on a military controlled zone, endures with great hardships an old retired colonel. A dangerously declining health, an aging wife with recurring asthmatic attacks, a house slowly coming down to pieces, a son lost to the revolution. All his hopes are focused on the arrival of news regarding his veteran pension, that seems never to come; and a little cockfighting rooster, that seems to be the strongest of all three.A short novella about the unbreakable will of the eternally patient, and the penurious conditions of a hardly day-to-day living.Interesting, readable, but not exceptionally enjoyable. I've been wanting to read Gabo again for some time now; I've read a lot of his books, but this is sadly not the one I loved most. And I still have "One hundred years of solitude" on tbr. I know, unforgivable.Still remaining, the movie (1999).Until next time,-----------------------------------------------Un coronel retirado, un pequeño gallo, y una paciencia de setenta y cinco años.En una desolada villa en el medio de la nada, en una zona controlada por milirates, sobrevive a duras penas un viejo retirado coronel. Una salud peligrosamente declinante, una envejecida esposa con recurrentes crisis asmáticas, una casa cayéndose lentamente a pedazos, un hijo muerto en la revolución. Todas sus esperanzas se centran en la llegada de alguna noticia sobre la pensión de veterano que parece nunca llegar; y en un pequeño gallo de peleas, que parece ser el más fuerte de los tres.Una corta novella sobre la voluntad inquebrantable del eterno paciente, y las penurias de sobrevivir difícilmente día a día.Interesante, leíble, pero no excepcionalmente disfrutable. Hace mucho tiempo que tenía ganas de volver a leer Gabo, pero lamentablemente éste no es el libro que más voy a recordar de él. Y todavía me debo leer "Cien años de soledad". Lo sé, imperdonable.Queda pendiente la película (1999).Hasta la próxima,

Magical Realism and Absurdist