Gabriel García Márquez
He is one of my favourite writers. I have read most of his books.
Of course, Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) intrigued me the most with its apparent Bible-like simplicity. All is told in the simplest of words, but what these simple words accomplish is nothing short of magic. Literary magic, naturally.
When I first read this wonderful book, I knew nothing of Spanish. I had to do with a translation of the novel.
Now, what I want here is 3 simple things:
1) to know other fans of the book and get in touch with them and share the elation and admiration we all supposedly had when reading this book; 2) to know how many of these people read it in a translation; 3) to know how many of you were fortunate enough to have been able to read in the original; from these I would like to know what it was like to be able to read such a book in the original; from them I would also like to know how advanced you must be in studying Spanish in order to get to that point where you can read this book without any major impediment.
Thank you all for your time.
10 Answers
I'm reading this book in Spanish and in English right now. I tend to be reading different books and doing many things at one time so I'm not making very quick progress but I'm about a third of the way through it. It's beautifully written and the translation is excellent.
I've found that after reading several chapters of it it's becoming much easier for me to read without the translation. I was reading a chapter or so in English and then going back and reading it in Spanish and now I've switched to reading in Spanish and then skimming through the English to make sure I didn't miss anything.
I would consider myself an advanced reader and I've read several novels in Spanish with no problems at all. This book, however, includes a ridiculous amount of challenging vocabulary that you just don't hear everyday....I even started making flashcards here for the first chapter and then got overhwhelmed by it. For a while there were about a dozen words per page that I didn't understand. But really it has gotten much, much easier now that I'm into it.
I believe in reading books in their original language whenever possible. If you are a student of one such language, great ! - do your best to read it in the original. I found it one of the best ways to learn.
I can't imagine Cien Años de Soledad in English. I can't see how it would really make sense.
I have read both the original English version, and a Spanish translation of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ring trilogy, as well as all of the Harry Potter books, to name a couple. The Spanish translations are very high quality... but you still lose so much! Bilbo Baggins, I am sorry to say, does not translate gracefullly as "Bilbo Bolsón". Ick!
And to translate "You know who" as "quien tú sabes" is ...pointless. Sounds silly. Spanish speakers would never say something like that.
Anyhow, I love to read, and I had a very frustrating experience apropos this recently. I got hold of Stieg Larson's Millennium trilogy - in Spanish. I could see that it was a fascinating story, delightfully written - but I absolutely hated the translation, because in my world people simply do not speak like that. I so wished I could understand Swedish!
I later skimmed through an English translation, and I found it much more comfortable to read. Still...if you can read the original language, even if with some difficulty, do yourself a favor and make the effort. I think it is so much worth it!
Hello fyyzyy,
I read the book in English and was fascinated to the end. I also have it in Spanish but am not yet to the point of being able to read in Spanish with much success.
Thank goodness for the diagram of the family tree!
Wikipedia makes it sound great too 
One Hundred Years of Solitude From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia One Hundred Years of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad, 1967), by Gabriel García Márquez, is the multi-generational story of the Buendía Family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the town of Macondo, the metaphoric Colombia. The non-linear story is narrated via different time frames, a technique derived from the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (as in The Garden of Forking Paths). The story, considered to be the author's magnum opus, was first published in Spanish in 1967, and succeeded until translated to thirty-seven languages. The magical realist style and thematic substance of One Hundred Years of Solitude established it as an important, representative novel of the literary Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s,[2] that was stylistically influenced by Modernism (European and North American), and the Cuban Vanguardia (Vanguard) literary movement.
Hi fyyzyy,
First time I read the book was in high school; it was a mandatory read for my literature classes.
I read it in my native language - macedonian. I loved it right away, it's a unique book, unique story and characters, hardly comparable to anything else I've read.
A while ago I read it once again and enjoyed equally.
Hopefully the third time I read it, it would be in the original...
I aspire to read these books in Spanish.
Wow!
I'm really impressed with all your answers, and comments, and personal reading experiences, and gracious advice, and subtle encouragement never to give up reading in a foreign language.
Thank you all for that
I'm really overwhelmed by this cornucopia of input, if I may say so. My deepest thanks to all of you.
When I posted this question yesterday I couldn't have known there would be so many of you interested in this. That, of course, makes me quite happy and, stimulated by the success my question has had with you, is giving me an idea: How about settling here, on the SD, a virtual Book Club, or a Reading Rendez-Vous, where we all can gather and talk about the books we like?
If you take a fancy to this idea, then let's do something about it
Thank you.
Fyyzyy,
This exchange done on Spanish Dict a few months ago might interest you:
To answer your question quickly this book is indeed a challenge to read in Spanish. I read it in Spanish and by the time I got to page 278 it got so confusing that I had to take a break. I read four other easy books in Spanish. I am now reading La casa de los Espíritus from Isabel Allende and I am really enjoying it. And for sure once I am done with that book I will go back to GGM and hopfully enjoy it better.
Cheers
Lo interesante sea que tienes la opinión que no es tan dificil de leerlo en español. Leo titulos como "El leon, la bruja y el ropero" en español por que no quiero buscar demasiadas palabras, y con libros con esto de hecho no tengo que buscar nada, si hay algunos que no entiendo, no importa. Miré los libros de Jorge Luis Borges, que me encantan en inglés, pero son dificíl en español, de veras. Pues, me das una idea digna de atención. Gracias!
J
I can address the second part of your third question--how advanced you have to be to read it in Spanish. To give you an idea of where I am in Spanish so you can get something out of my description of how I did reading it, I went to a Spanish immersion elementary school (I took math, science, and Spanish classes in Spanish; admittedly not all the most useful vocabulary for reading novels) and took the whole progression of Spanish classes in middle and high school, from Spanish I (because they didn't offer more advanced classes is middle school) to AP Spanish.
I bought a copy of Cien años de soledad in Spanish in my last year of high school and set about reading it. On most pages, there was a word or two I didn't know, and so I would stop and write it down or look it up. This made the going very slow, and I eventually put it down and read something else because the whole thing just felt like a chore. However, I think it could have been a lot easier and more enjoyable. About I year ago, I read an entire book in Spanish while stuck in the airport without internet access or a dictionary. I just read; I did come across words I didn't know, but I didn't write them down or look them up, because I had no way to do so. I just kept reading. Mostly, I could get an idea of a word's meaning by simply looking at the context, and if not, I didn't worry about it. Later, I may go back and look them up, but I finished the book and it was a much more pleasant experience. I understood it just fine and genuinely enjoyed it. It felt like less of a chore. Admittedly, this book was about a band and didn't have as many unknown words, and maybe Cien años de soledad wasn't the book for me, but I think it might have gone more smoothly if I'd taken the second approach. Not that you shouldn't try to expand your vocabulary or look up a word if you have no idea what it means, but my advice would be to not get discouraged by not understanding very word. You don't need to be at a level where you know all the vocabulary to get a lot out of reading it in Spanish. You've read the English version, so even if you don't know every word in the Spanish version, I would try to just get as much as you can without agonizing over every unknown adjective and appreciate the author's prose in his own language. And if you can read it without setting it down to go to the dictionary every other sentence, it may feel like you're actually just reading a novel. And that's the idea, isn't it?
Sorry about the long-winded tirade. 
Oh, and, also, you may want to check out my flashcards. There's one set called "Cien años de soeldad" and it has the words I had to look up and a few other I thought other people might have to look up from the first chapter or so.
