迷宫中的将军 (1989)

迷宫中的将军 （西班牙语原名： El general en su laberinto）是诺贝尔文学奖得主、哥伦比亚作家加布里埃尔·加西亚·马尔克斯1989年发表的历史小说，描写南美解放者西蒙·玻利瓦尔1830年12月生命最后的14天，沿着马格达莱纳河幻影般的旅程。这部小说是受好友阿尔瓦罗·穆蒂斯的激励而着手创作的。

The General in His Labyrinth (original Spanish title: El general en su laberinto) is a 1989 dictator novel by Gabriel García Márquez. It is a semi-fictionalized account of the last seven months of Simón Bolívar, liberator and leader of Gran Colombia. The book traces Bolívar's final journey from Bogotá to the Caribbean coastline of Colombia in his attempt to leave South America for exile in Europe. Breaking with the traditional heroic portrayal of Bolívar El Libertador, García Márquez depicts a pathetic protagonist, a prematurely aged man who is physically ill and mentally exhausted. The story explores the labyrinth of Bolívar's life through the narrative of his memories, in which "despair, sickness, and death inevitably win out over love, health, and life".

Following the success of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), García Márquez decided to write about the "Great Liberator" after reading an unfinished novel by his friend Álvaro Mutis. He borrowed the setting—Bolívar's voyage down the Magdalena River in 1830—from Mutis. García Márquez spent two years researching the subject, encompassing the extensive memoirs of Bolívar's Irish aide-de-camp, Daniel Florencio O'Leary, as well as numerous other historical documents and consultations with academics.

Its mixture of genres makes The General in His Labyrinth difficult to classify, and commentators disagree over where it lies on the scale between novel and historical account. García Márquez's insertion of interpretive and fictionalized elements—some dealing with Bolívar's most intimate moments—initially caused outrage in parts of Latin America. Many prominent Latin American figures believed that the novel portrayed a negative image to the outside world of one of the region's most important historic figures. Others saw The General in His Labyrinth as a tonic for Latin American culture and a challenge to the region to deal with its problems.

Background

The initial idea to write a book about Simón Bolívar came to García Márquez through his friend and fellow Colombian writer Álvaro Mutis, to whom the book is dedicated. Mutis had started writing a book called El último rostro about Bolívar's final voyage along the Magdalena River, but never finished it. At the time, García Márquez was interested in writing about the Magdalena River because he knew the area intimately from his childhood. Two years after reading El último rostro, García Márquez asked Mutis for his permission to write a book on Bolívar's last voyage.

García Márquez believed that most of the information available on Bolívar was one-dimensional: "No one ever said in Bolívar's biographies that he sang or that he was constipated ... but historians don't say these things because they think they are not important." In the epilogue to the novel, García Márquez writes that he researched the book for two years; the task was difficult, both because of his lack of experience in conducting historical research, and the lack of documentary evidence for the events of the final period of Bolívar's life.

García Márquez researched a wide variety of historical documents, including Bolívar's letters, 19th-century newspapers, and Daniel Florencio O'Leary's 34 volumes of memoirs. He engaged the help of various experts, among them geographer Gladstone Oliva; historian and fellow Colombian Eugenio Gutiérrez Celys, who had co-written a book called Bolívar Día a Día with historian Fabio Puyo; and astronomer Jorge Perezdoval—García Márquez used an inventory drawn up by Perezdoval to describe which nights Bolívar spent under a full moon. García Márquez also worked closely with Antonio Bolívar Goyanes, a distant relative of Bolívar, during the extensive editing of the book.

Historical context

The novel is set in 1830, at the tail end of the initial campaign to secure Latin America's independence from Spain. Most of Spanish America had gained independence by this date; only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule.