Leaf Storm
First edition (Colombia)
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| Author | Gabriel García Márquez |
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| Original title | La Hojarasca |
| Country | Colombia |
| Language | Spanish |
| Publisher | Ediciones SLB (Colombia) Harper & Row (US) |
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Publication date
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1955 |
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Published in English
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1972 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | |
Leaf Storm is the common translation for Gabriel García Márquez's novella La Hojarasca. First published in 1955, it took seven years to find a publisher. Widely celebrated as the first appearance of Macondo, the fictitious village later made famous in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Leaf Storm is a testing ground for many of the themes and characters later immortalized in said book. It is also the title of a short story collection by García Márquez.
The other stories compiled in the English translation are “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, “Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Miracles”, “The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship”, “The Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo”, and “Nabo”. Several of these short stories appeared elsewhere before being put into this compilation. “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” first appeared in Playboy magazine in 1971. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” first appeared in New American Review and “Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Miracles” was first published in Esquire Magazine.
The narrative of Leaf Storm shifts between the perspectives of three generations of one family as the three characters (father, daughter and grandson respectively) find themselves in a spiritual limbo after the death of a man passionately hated by the entire village yet inextricably linked to the patriarch of the family.
The novella takes place in Macondo, the fictional town that would be the future site of more Márquez stories. At this point and time in the little town of Macondo the banana boat company has landed and with it many new people to work. The newcomers are referred to as “la hojarasca”, hence the title of the book. However, the narrative surrounds a colonel, his daughter Isabel, his grandson and the burial of a doctor scorned by the village. The story takes place at the wake of the doctor.
The Father, an aging, half blind man who carries the title of colonel within the village, has made a promise to bury the recently deceased former doctor in spite of the consensus within Macondo that he should be left to rot within the corner house where he had lived in complete social isolation for the past decade. The daughter, Isabel, is obliged to accompany her father out of respect for traditional values while knowing she and her son will be doomed to face the wrath of her neighbors in Macondo. The narrative of the grandson, on the other hand, is more preoccupied with the mystery and wonder of death.
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Wikipedia