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Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez.

Published: November 2006 (first published 2004) by Vintage International

Binding: Paperback, 115 pages

Setting: Colombia

Literary awards: Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (2005)

Description:
On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. As is his habit–he has purchased hundreds of women–he asks a madam for her assistance. The fourteen-year-old girl who is procured for him is enchanting, but exhausted as she is from caring for siblings and her job sewing buttons, she can do little but sleep. Yet with this sleeping beauty at his side, it is he who awakens to a romance he has never known. Tender, knowing, and slyly comic, Memories of My Melancholy Whores is an exquisite addition to the master’s work.

Gabriel Gárcia Márquez Biography's

García Márquez, Gabriel (1928– ), Colombian novelist, short‐story writer, and polemical journalist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. His literary works have influenced writers all over the world. In particular, his novel Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967) is a landmark in literary theory and history, since it gave rise to the term ‘magic realism’ and led many writers to imitate its style. As a major representative of ‘magic realism’, García Márquez has always felt suspicious of pure realism which, in his view, is unable to capture the essence of Latin America. Consequently, both his novels and short stories integrate the real and the fantastic, together with mythic, legendary, and magical elements. In fact, it is not uncommon for García Márquez's short stories to have their sources in Märchen, folklore, and myth. Formally austere and frequently located in rural settings, they are full of surprising elements that defy rational laws and make demands on the reader's imagination. His first volume of short stories, Los funerales de la Mamá Grande (Big Mama's Funeral, 1962) has been critically acclaimed as his best collection. It includes, among many others, two prodigious tales: ‘La prodigiosa tarde de Baltazar’ (‘Balthazar's Prodigious Evening’, 1962) and ‘La viuda de Montiel’ (‘The Widow of Montiel’, 1962). In the 1970s García Márquez published two other collections of short stories: La increíble y triste historia de la cándida Eréndira y de su abuela desalmada (Innocent Eréndira and Other Stories, 1972) and Ojos de perro azul (A Blue Dog's Eyes, 1972). Several critics have considered the title story of the former as a revision of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’, a tale that García Márquez goes back to in ‘El avión de la bella durmiente’ (‘The Sleeping Beauty's Plane’, 1982). This tale is included within his last volume of short stories, Doce cuentos peregrinos (Twelve Wandering Tales, 1992). Also incorporated into this collection is ‘El rastro de tu sangre en la nieve’ (‘The Trace of Your Blood on the Snow’, 1976), which is likewise related to the fairy‐tale genre.