Gabriel García Márquez’s novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ was first published in 1967.
The Spanish-language original, ‘Cien años de soledad’, appeared in May 1967 in Buenos Aires, published by Editorial Sudamericana. It tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family and the rise and decline of Macondo, the fictional town founded by José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán.
The year 1970 is a common mix-up because that was when Gregory Rabassa’s English translation was published. The original Spanish edition came three years earlier and quickly established García Márquez as a leading figure of the Latin American Boom and magical realism.
The novel grew from García Márquez’s memories of Colombia, family stories and historical events such as civil conflict and the 1928 banana massacre. A famous account of its composition says that, while driving toward Acapulco with his family in 1965, he suddenly found the narrative voice he had been seeking and turned back to write.
The book has since been translated into dozens of languages and is widely regarded as García Márquez’s masterpiece.