One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel García Márquez's novel follows seven generations of the Buendia family in Macondo, the fictional town founded by the patriarch Jose Arcadio Buendia and his wife Ursula Iguaran. For years Macondo has almost no contact with the outside world apart from a yearly visit by a band of Gypsies, led by Melquiades, who show the townspeople magnets, ice and telescopes. Jose Arcadio grows withdrawn and obsessed with the mysteries the Gypsies bring, and his family is drawn again and again into strange events and misfortunes that are mostly self-inflicted. Written in a magical realist style, the novel has been translated into 46 languages and adapted as a Netflix series.

It appears on a list of books Barack Obama recommended during his presidency, and Dua Lipa chose it as a monthly read for her Service95 Book Club. Oprah Winfrey, who picked it for Oprah's Book Club, compared its density and sensuality to the jungle around Macondo.