The novel is centered around Simon Bolivar, the hero of South America's independence war against Spanish overlords – albeit not on his days of glory and valour, but on the later months of his life, when both health and power were health were slipping through his bony hands, in the tumultuous year of 1830.
This aspect is the main characteristic of the text – it depicts an once powerful warlord in a defeated, downtrodden state, needing constant support and medical care, a grumpy, weary man who, entertaining vain hopes of fleeing the country that spurned him, embarked on his last and senseless journey down the river to the port that he would never leave, surrounded by his melancholical comrades of war.
The main character, refered to as 'General', feels that the cotry he has built is falling apart, that all he had fought for is lost due to internal conflicts and sectarianism, that everyone hides the truth or betrays him. The narrative is intermingled with his memories of battles and love affairs, and, sometimes, his delirious ravings about various political topics. A memorable aspect is that in almost every town or point of rest he is met with overt popousness that utterly annoys him.
Yet… The novel felt to me kind of boring. I couldn't help feeling a constant tedium through all those descriptions of nature and daily life, of political life, of uprisings by general that and that. Reading the book in my monotonous hours, I almost felt that it became an organic part of this monotony, hence I have finished it out of duty, not pleasure. Well, as once a smarter person said to me: 'You are simply not the target audience of the book'. And it might be so
by ArthRol