Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A collection of short stories, Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez portrays several heart touching themes varying from exile to displacement and even death through the captivating journeys of Latin Americans living in Europe.

Summary Of The Book

Strange Pilgrims showcase horror and beauty delicately woven to create a rich tapestry of emotion. Themes of displacement and exile run commonly throughout the stories which portray the lives of Latin Americans in Europe.

The twelve stories have the common themes of dislocation and survival of identity in a foreign land. Bon Voyage, Mr. President, is the first story telling the tale of Mr. President, an overthrown ruler who heads to Geneva to find a cure for his medical problems. His experience in the foreign country and the unexpected bond he develops with a fellow countryman is the crux of the story.

The Saint chronicles the life of Margarito Duarte and his efforts in canonizing his dead daughter. The visage of the most beautiful woman he has ever seen makes Garcia Marquez fall in love at first sight at a Paris Airport in Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane tells the story of his adoration of this beautiful stranger.

I Sell My Dreams features supernatural elements wherein the central character is a mysterious woman who sells her dreams. A helpless woman unfairly admitted into a mental institution forms the crux of the story in I Only Came To Use The Phone.

The Ghosts of August is another supernatural story which regales the tale of a family's experience in a haunted castle. Maria dos Prazeres is a story about an old woman who dreams of death and subsequently goes to great lengths to prepare for it, even letting her dog pick her gravesite only to realise that life is not over for her yet. Seventeen Poisoned Englishmen tells the story of a South American tourist who finds herself in the midst of several deaths.

Tramontana features the Tramontana, a catalan wind with paranormal characteristics, as the catalytic central force in the story. Miss Forbes’s Summer of Happines features an austere nanny and two boys as the central characters.

The stories in Strange Pilgrims were written in the 1970s and 1980s, but were published in 1992.

About Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, affectionately known as Gabo throughout Latin America, is a popular Colombian novelist, short story writer, screen writer and journalist.

His other works include The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Big Mama's Funeral, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Autumn of the Patriarch and Love in the Time of Cholera.

Marquez was born in 1927 in Aracataca in Colombia. He abandoned law in favour of pursuing journalism. His passion for the society at large has seen him criticising the Colombian government and foreign politics. Awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, his status in the literary world is well founded. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha. The couple have two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.