Strange Pilgrims is a novel published in 1992 and written by Gabriel García Márquez in the 1970s. García Márquez was born in Colombia, but was exiled for a time period himself from the country. García Márquez has also won the Nobel Prize and is a master of writing short stories filled with tangible emotion.
Strange Pilgrims is actually composed of 12 separate but somewhat related short stories. In one of them, an ambulance driver, who lives in Switzerland with his wife, invites the former president of a country in the Caribbean Sea, who deceptively appears close to death. In another, a woman who can see the future turns her talent into something much more profitable; she becomes a wealthy family’s fortune teller. In yet another one, a prostitute near death teaches her dog to mourn at her chosen gravesite, so at least someone will remember her.
Through all of these stories, García Márquez deftly draws together tenacity, sorrow, grief, and hope and also illustrates the themes of alienation and appearance versus reality.
