SOURCE: Rodman, Selden. “The Conqueror's Descent.” National Review 42, no. 20 (15 October 1990): 87-9.

In the following review, Rodman commends García Márquez's balanced portrait of Símon Bolívar in The General in His Labyrinth.

A visitor once suggested to Gabriel García Márquez that a novel exploring the life of Símon Bolívar might win him the Nobel Prize. “I'd like to receive it,” he replied, “after I've made enough money to refuse—without economic remorse. The Nobel Prize has become an international lizard hunt.”

So now, twenty years later, with the Nobel Prize already his, the Colombian poet-novelist has indeed written his threnody to the immortal Liberator [The General in His Labyrinth], and what kind of book is it? Dazzling, of course. And with a jacket painting almost as dazzling as the text, showing the great man's hammock (slung between two flowering trees) containing nothing...