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Zusatztext “A triumph of storytelling.” – San Francisco Chronicle “Full of relish at life’s oddness. . . . García Márquez’s sheer ability to hold and enthrall makes Strange Pilgrims fascinating and memorable.” – The New York Times Books Review “Psychologically sharp . . . altogether ingratiating."– The Washington Post "Nothing short of brilliant—each of these tales is a gem."– The Seattle Times “García Márquez at his best. With a surreal phrase or a magic image! he allows us to see reality! grave and comic at once! in a unique light.” – Los Angeles Times Book Review Informationen zum Autor Gabriel García Márquez was born in Colombia in 1927. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. He is the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including One Hundred Years of Solitude , Love In The Time Cholera , The Autumn Of The Patriarch , The General In His Labyrinth , and News Of A Kidnapping . He died in 2014. This book is translated by Edith Grossman, widely recognized as the preeminent Spanish to English translator of our time. Klappentext In Barcelona! an aging Brazilian prostitute trains her dog to weep at the grave she has chosen for herself. In Vienna! a woman parlays her gift for seeing the future into a fortunetelling position with a wealthy family. In Geneva! an ambulance driver and his wife take in the lonely! apparently dying ex-President of a Caribbean country! only to discover that his political ambition is very much intact. In these twelve masterly stories about the lives of Latin Americans in Europe! Garcia Marquez conveys the peculiar amalgam of melancholy! tenacity! sorrow! and aspiration that is the emigre experience. Bon Voyage, Mr. PresidentHe sat on a wooden bench under the yellow leaves in the deserted park, contemplating the dusty swans with both his hands resting on the silver handle of his cane, and thinking about death. On his first visit to Geneva the lake had been calm and clear, and there were tame gulls that would eat out of one's hand, and women for hire who seemed like six-in-the-afternoon phantoms with organdy ruffles and silk parasols. Now the only possible woman he could see was a flower vendor on the deserted pier. It was difficult for him to believe that time could cause so much ruin not only in his life but in the world.He was one more incognito in the city of illustrious incognitos. He wore the dark blue pin-striped suit, brocade vest, and stiff hat of a retired magistrate. He had the arrogant mustache of a musketeer, abundant blue-black hair with romantic waves, a harpist's hands with the widower's wedding band on his left ring finger, and joyful eyes. Only the weariness of his skin betrayed the state of his health. Even so, at the age of seventy-three, his elegance was still notable. That morning, however, he felt beyond the reach of all vanity. The years of glory and power had been left behind forever, and now only the years of his death remained.He had returned to Geneva after two world wars, in search of a definitive answer to a pain that the doctors in Martinique could not identify. He had planned on staying no more than two weeks but had spent almost six in exhausting examinations and inconclusive results, and the end was not yet in sight. They looked for the pain in his liver, his kidneys, his pancreas, his prostate, wherever it was not. Until that bitter Thursday, when he had made an appointment for nine in the morning at the neurology department with the least well-known of the many physicians who had seen him.The office resembled a monk's cell, and the doctor was small and solemn and wore a cast on the broken thumb of his right hand. When the light was turned off, the illuminated X ray of a spinal column appeared on a screen, but he did not recognize it as his own until the doctor used a pointer to indicate the juncture of two vertebra...
