Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice… With these words begins one of the most captivating and renowned novels of the twentieth century. A work that, "from mouth to mouth," as its author liked to say, was read by millions of readers in all the languages of the world and whose contribution was decisive in awarding Márquez the Nobel Prize in Literature. The story of a town, Macondo, and a family, the Buendías – and through their passions, dreams, tragedies, betrayals, discoveries, miracles, mysteries, and disillusionments, the story of a country, a continent, and the entire world. "The Don Quixote of our time." Pablo Neruda "The first literary work since Genesis that should be read by all of humanity." The New York Times Book Review