There was a heavy sense of deja vu hanging over me as this novel unfolded, which could have been all part of the mysterious Marquez magic, or alternatively, I may have actually read this bewitching novel a couple of hundred years ago. Either way, it was an enchanting read that, by the pioneering use of magic realism, was able to engage the reader on any number of dimensions. The fact that Marquez was not on my radar until the avalanche of glowing obituaries started flowing in, is probably more an indictment of my Anglo-centric reading habits than anything else, but having finally registered, I knew straight away I was dealing with one of the twentieth century’s great literary gems.

I hesitantly beg to differ with Mr Salman Rushdie who claims this is the greatest novel in any language of the last fifty years. No, I would elevate his own ‘Midnight’s Children’ to that lofty perch, but there is little doubt that this one is right up there in the stratosphere and the fact that it was written way back in 1967 gives it that much more status than so much of what has followed. I know Mr Rushdie would concur that without Marquez there would be no Midnight’s Children.

It’s tempting to enter an intriguing little mind-game with yourself as to whether Marquez is offering a cyclical or linear vision of the world. The obvious dialectical answer to that little conundrum is that he offers both. There is no doubt that Marquez presents, through the tightly connected generations of the Buendia family, the blindingly obvious concept that we humans tend to keep repeating endless cycles of dreams, ambitions and follies. Nothing controversial there. But more contentious perhaps is the prospect of some linear progression for mankind. Everywhere in the fictitious village of Macondo, the reader senses that as well as the cyclical pattern of human endeavour, history has a linear progression from isolation and superstition through to science and interconnection. Whether Marquez had this view of life I am not entirely sure, but the reader, myself included, has every opportunity to draw this conclusion.

Is the final destruction of Macondo a metaphor for an obsolete period of human organisation? We know that Marquez and Fidel Castro were good mates so it is all the more easy to reach the conclusion that the destruction of both the Buendia clan and their isolated settlement represents for Marquez the passing of the pre-colonial and colonial era in Central and South America. The Banana Company, with all the greed and violence associated with it, is the perfect symbol of South America’s colonial past. And to draw attention to and to underline this violence and greed, Marquez uses the ultimate literary technique; tell the reader that it never really existed, that it was all an illusion, a trick of the senses. And then replace reality with mysticism. Ben Okri and Salman Rushdie adopted exactly the same technique in their novels to such great effect.

To be a socialist is to believe in better, or at the very least, to believe in different. Without this belief there can be little incentive to socially engage. And without engagement life can be little more than the pursuit of individual comfort and pleasure. A philosophy of hedonism and death. Some of the Buendia family are presented in just this way. Colonel Aureliano Buendia is different. He seeks to change the world. But after thirty two wars he too wearies of it all and sinks back into a self- imposed isolation. What is this defeated idealism meant to represent? Marquez is not the sort of writer to offer glib answers but he does give his readers plenty to chew on. When the obituaries start to pour in for Fidel they will undoubtedly present a man who never surrendered to isolationism and defeat. Difficult to know where Marquez finally stood on mankind’s never-ending quest for justice and progress. Would it always collapse in despair and disillusionment as it did for the General, or was General Aureliano Buendia a general warning by Marquez of the pitfalls of blind idealism. Well, all these unknowns are an essential ingredient to the novel. What is real and what is illusion? What is linear and what is cyclical? What is significant and what is transient?

And what of love, asks Marquez? Real or illusionary? We are offered many forms of love throughout the one hundred years of Macondo; the incestual, the contractual, the habitual, the illusional and the untenable. Just to mention a few. Can love ever be anything other than a mirage asks Marquez? Show me someone that professes to know the answer to that one and I’ll show you a liar and a fraudster. And what’s so wrong with a little lying and fraud? All part of the human DNA I hear Marquez whisper from his grave.

If I did read this novel when I was young and then promptly forgot it, I am unlikely to do so this time around. Coming to it older and hopefully wiser, I’ve got a feeling it is going to linger. Perhaps this is not a novel for the young and arrogant. They have far too many important things to do. This one is best savoured for those who know that the finishing line is a damn sight closer than the start. It is a novel for reflection, for contemplation and for rumination. Youth need not apply.