Contains Leaf Storm , The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World , A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings , Blacaman the Good , Vendor of Miracles , The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship , Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo , Nabo "For Garcí a Má rquez the world contains mysteries that we need and can easily live with, but also miracles that we cannot understand, that speak for forces unknown to men. 'Leaf Storm, ' then, brings together both Garcí a Má rquez's early and late styles. The former deserves our respect; the latter requires our celebration."-- Peter S. Prescott, "Newsweek""To call these allegories would be to suggest that they are 'symbolic' somehow and perhaps plainly stated. They ore not; the texture is that of the prose poem, and the intention a restatement of religious belief. But the feeling one comes away with is that of enchantment, which is a sense of having endured terror and magic." -- Paul Theroux, "Chicago Tribune""Garcí a Má rquez has extraordinary strength and firmness of imagination and writes with the calmness of a man who knows exactly what wonders he can perform. Strange things happen in the land of Má rquez. As with Emerson, Poe, Hawthorne, every sentence breaks the silence of a vast emptiness, the famous New World 'solitude' that is the unconscious despair of his characters but the sign of Má rquez's genius." -- Alfred Kazin, "The New York Times Book Review" 'Garcia Marquez has extraordinary strength and firmness of imagination and writes with the calmness of a man who knows exactly what wonders he can perform. Strange things happen in the land of Marquez. As with Emerson, Poe, Hawthorne, every sentence breaks the silence of a vast emptiness, the famous New World 'solitude' that is the unconscious despair of his characters but the sign of Marquez's genius.' Contains Leaf Storm , The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World , A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings , Blacaman the Good , Vendor of Miracles , The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship , Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo , Nabo Gabriel García Márquez was born in 1927 in the town of Aracataca, Columbia. Latin America's preeminent man of letters, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. García Márquez began his writing career as a journalist and is the author of numerous other works of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels The Autumn of the Patriarch and Love in the Time of Cholera , and the autobiography Living to Tell the Tale . There has been resounding acclaim for his life's work since his death in April 2014. Leaf Storm And Other Stories By Garcia Marquez, Gabriel Perennial ISBN: 006075155X Chapter One I've seen a corpse for the first time. It's Wednesday but I feel as if it was Sunday because I didn't go to school and they dressed me up in a green corduroy suit that's tight in some places. Holding Mama's hand, following my grandfather, who feels his way along with a cane with every step he takes so he won't bump into things (be doesn't see well in the dark and he limps), I went past the mirror in the living room and saw myself full length, dressed in green and with this white starched collar that pinches me on one side of the neck. I saw myself in the round mottled looking glass and I thought: That's me, as if today was Sunday. We've come to the house where the dead man is. The beat won't let you breathe in the closed room. You can hear the sun buzzing in the streets, but that's all. The air is stagnant, like concrete; you get the feeling that it could get all twisted like a sheet of steel. In the room where they've laid out the corpse there's a smell of trunks, but I can't see any anywhere. There's a hammock in the corner hanging by one end from a ring. There's a smell of trash. And I think that the things around us, broken down and almost falling apart, have the look of things that ought to smell like trash even though they smell like something else. I always thought that dead people should have hats on. Now I can see that they shouldn't. I can see that they have a head like wax and a handkerchief tied around their jawbone. I can see that they have their mouth open a little and that behind the purple lips you can see the stained and irregular teeth. I can see that they keep their tongue bitten over to one side, thick and sticky, a little darker than the color of their face, which is like the color of fingers clutching a stick. I can see that they have their eyes open much wider than a man's, anxious and wild, and that their skin seems to be made of tight damp earth. I thought that a dead man would look like somebody quiet and asleep and now I can see that it's just the opposite. I can see that he looks like someone awake and in a rage after a fight. Mama is dressed tip as if it was Sunday too. She put on the old straw hat that comes down over her ears and a black dress closed at the neck and with sleeves that come down to her wrists. Since today is We