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15 000 €

Réf : 80853

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Gabriel GARCIA MARQUEZ

Cien Años de Soledad

Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos Aires 1967, 13,5x20cm, broché.

Cien Años de Soledad [One Hundred Years of Solitude]
 

Second edition only one month after the first edition.
Spine lightly wrinkled, small traces of folding to margins of the covers, a light mark on the second cover.

Rare and precious copy signed and inscribed by Gabriel García Márquez to his friend and translator Claude Couffon: “Para Claude, con un gran abrazo de amigo, Gabriel 1968.” (“For Claude, with a big hug from your friend, Gabriel 1968.”)


Claude Couffon, a French specialist and translator of the major Spanish-speaking writers of the second half of the 20th century, translated Chronicle of a Death Foretold a few years later.
On the last page, below the colophon, Gabriel García Márquez added the Barcelona address of his famous literary agent for Spain: “c/o Agencia Carmen Ballcells Urgel 241, Barcelona, 11.”

Rightly considered as one of the most important works in Spanish, the novel by García Márquez, however, had difficult beginnings after a first being rejected by the avant-garde Barcelona publisher Seix Barral: “This novel will not be successful [...], this novel is useless.”
García Márquez sent it from Mexico to the Argentinian publisher Francisco Porrúa who immediately perceived the power of this unknown Colombian writer: “It wasn't a question of getting to the end to find out if the novel could be published. The publication was already decided from the first line, in the first paragraph. I simply understood what any sensible publisher would have understood: that it was an exceptional work.”
Finished printing in May 1967, Cien Años de Soledad appeared in bookshops in June with 8,000 copies selling out in a few days. The second print on 30 June will have the same success, as will the editions that follow week after week. More than half a million copies were sold in three years.

Several copies were later inscribed by Gabriel García Márquez who over the years has become one of the most famous South American writers, translated into 25 languages. However, contemporary autograph inscriptions on the first few printings are extremely rare, even more so to one of his French translators who will contribute largely to his international renown.
 

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