Strange Pilgrims : Book review


Book Review

 

Title: Strange Pilgrims

Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Genre: Fiction

 

Reading a book by the king of Magical realism is always a delightful experience.

 

Strange pilgrims is a collection of 12 short stories of characters who are in some kind of a transit, emotionally, physically and spiritually. There is a president who is battling a disease, a father who hopes to earn the status of a saint for his deceased daughter, a woman accidentally landing up in a mental asylum, a prostitute selecting her burial site. Some of the other stories entail deaths in the form of accident, suicide or murder. 

 

There exists a fluidity in the writing style which is lyrical and eloquent. He manages to weave magical elements in his story telling which makes the readers oscillate between fantasy and reality. The main focus is on Latin American characters who are in Europe. They are portrayed to be lonely, melancholic and dealing with some kind of a loss. The stories that stayed with me are Bon Voyage Mr President, The Saint and I only came to use the phone. Some of the themes captured are death, diseases and strangeness. In some of the stories, he manages to capture the act of kindness. 

 

The title is a metaphorical representation of travelling between time and places. Strange pilgrims will make you experience the oddity of the characters in their haunting journeys. 

 

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