The Autumn of the Patriarch

The Autumn of the Patriarch (original Spanish title: El otoño del patriarca) is a 1975 novel by Gabriel García Márquez. A "poem on the solitude of power" according to the author, the novel is a flowing tract on the life of an eternal dictator. The book is divided into six sections, each retelling the same story of the infinite power held by the archetypical Caribbean tyrant. García Márquez based his fictional dictator on a variety of real-life leaders, including Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of his Colombian homeland, Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain (the novel was written in Barcelona), and Venezuela's Juan Vicente Gómez. The product is a universal story of the disastrous effects created by the concentration of power into a single man. Plot introduction The book is written in long paragraphs with extended sentences. The general's thoughts are relayed to the reader through winding sentences which convey his desperation and loneliness alongside the atrocities and ruthless behavior that keep him in power. The first three chapters begin with an omniscient and anonymous narrator finding the corpse of the General; the beginning of the third chapter reveals that the body belonged to Patricio Aragonés, whom, due to their uncanny resemblance, the general uses to fake his own death.