Why a Booktrail?
1830s – The General in His Labyrinth is an unforgettable portrait of a visionary from one of the greatest writers to come out of Latin America if not the world.
The General in His Labyrinth
What you need to know before your trail
The tragic story of General Simon Bolivar -the General – the man who tried to unite a continent.
Simon Bolivar, known across Latin America as the Liberator, is a man revered and worshipped.
This is the story imagined by a great writer who looks at his life and his flaws as he immerses himself in Bolivar’s story and follows him down the Magdalena River towards the sea in 1830.
Travel Guide
‘It was the fourth time he had travelled along the Magdalena, and he could not escape the impression that he was retracing the steps of his life’
General Simón Bolívar is now in exile, making his final journey down the Magdalene River. The river becomes almost a time line of his life as he stops off at various places along the way and relives happy and sad times, revisits cities and settlements where he has celebrated both triumphs and lesser successes. Travelling and reliving his life is his way of making sense of his past and where his path in live has led him to. He needs a way out of the labyrinth that his life has become and this for him may just be the way to do that.
With him, the reader revisits the scenes of Bolivar’s former glory and laments with him over his lost dream of an alliance of American nations.
Bolivar is still a remarkable figure and stays alive and fearful by sheer willpower throwing back anything which is thrown at him. Despite having a fatal illness, even this does not stop him.
This is quite the journey as the novel takes us across Colombia, Panama, Ecuador and Venezuela and not only shows the sights or landscape but the bigger picture of a country undergoing remarkable change at a pivotal time in its history.
There is a map at the start of the book which illustrates the very detailed journey that was actually involved.
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