Love in the Time of Cholera was one of García Márquez’s most successful novels with both literary critics and general readers, thereby not only repeating the achievement of One Hundred Years of Solitude but also demonstrating beyond all doubt that he had survived the stresses and the temptations which inevitably follow the award of the Nobel Prize. He was by now a Latin American institution – almost as famous as Castro, Guevara, Evita, Pele and Maradona – and felt able to turn his attention to the greatest institution in Latin America’s entire history, the great Liberator, Simón Bolívar.

The General in His Labyrinth (1989)

By this time, indeed, García Márquez was a close friend of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and other politicians such as socialists Felipe González of Spain and François Mitterrand of France. He had always had a feel for power in his literary imagination but by now he had seen it from the inside over a considerable period of time. He set out to meet the ultimate challenge by writing a novel about the last months of Latin America’s most famous figure, Bolívar. Inevitably, the book caused great controversy in Latin America, especially in Colombia and Venezuela, where those who idolise the Liberator do not approve of people, even great writers, tampering with his image.