THE GENERAL IN HIS LABYRINTH

London: Jonathan Cape, 1991. Very good plus.. Uncorrected advance proof of the UK edition of the Nobel Prize-winning Colombian novelist's fictionalized account of Simón Bolívar's last months. "Had Bolivar not existed," Atwood writes, "Mr. Garcia Marquez would have had to invent him." In some respects, he did: the events of Bolívar's final days are unrecorded in official histories, and the author's recreation of that time incorporates both critique and invention, resulting in what is less a traditional historical novel than what Alvarez Borland calls a historiographic metafiction. "Seldom has there been a more fitting match between author and subject. Mr. Garcia Marquez wades into his flamboyant, often improbable and ultimately tragic material with enormous gusto, heaping detail upon sensuous detail, alternating grace with horror, perfume with the stench of corruption, the elegant language of public ceremony with the vulgarity of private moments, the rationalistic clarity of Bolivar's thought with the malarial intensity of his emotions, but tracing always the main compulsion that drives his protagonist: the longing for an independent and unified South America" (Atwood). 8'' x 5.5''. Original white photographic wrappers. [12], 286 pages. Wrappers with light wear and rubbing, minor bumping to spine ends. interior crisp and clean. (Inventory #: 54003)