Even all these years later, the words are still seared in my brain:
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.
That’s the first line of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a book that defined my childhood, and one of the books that introduced the concept of magical realism to literature, part of a collection of work that, years later, earned Garcia Marquez a Nobel Prize in Literature.
And now, it’s being adapted into a series for Netflix.
Now, of course, this is scary AF news. Garcia Marquez requires nuance, and I cannot, for the life of me, imagine this coming anywhere even close to working unless the production is very much latinx, and more than that, Colombian. I still remember the butchered attempt at adapting Isabel Allende’s House of Spirits Hollywood attempted over twenty years ago. Not even Meryl Streep could save that, because the people behind that script and behind the camera didn’t understand Clara del Valle or Esteban Trueba.
But, and this is a bit but, this is also, in many ways, a huge step for Latin American literature in general. Nobel or not, Garcia Marquez isn’t really a mainstream author in the United States, and if helps his brilliant work gain readers and recognition, then that will be a good thing.
Netflix has acquired the rights to Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and will adapt it into a series. This marks the first and only time in more than 50 years that his family has allowed the project to be adapted for the screen. pic.twitter.com/HUX1miRAJs
— See What’s Next (@seewhatsnext) March 6, 2019
What do you think about the news? Are you excited? Apprehensive? Share with us in the comments below!