There is a legend surrounding the creation of One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is said that García Márquez and his family were traveling to Acalpulco when he had a vision of a story in which a father takes his child to see ice. He then turned the car around and secluded himself in his study in Mexico for several months while he wrote the novel. When he emerged with the manuscript finished, his wife handed him a stack of bills. He handed her his manuscript, which she mailed to his publisher.
This legend is part truth and part fiction, much like One Hundred Years of Solitude. Much of the author’s life appears in the novel. For example, he grew up by a banana plantation whose workers “...