Works like this free the reader from the shackles of everyday life; they help you see the world as a whole—in all its variety. They offer a view of life not as a jumble of days and nights, seasons and years, but as something whole, indivisible, having neither beginning nor end. With magical, vivid language, Gabriel García Márquez paints despotism in every conceivable—and inconceivable—form, stripped to its essence and turned inside out.