Garcia Marquez has been translated into so many different languages, and acclaimed for so many different reasons, that any generalisation about the secret of his success is bound to look unsatisfactory. But in this country, at least, part of his appeal is as an expansive and full-blooded alternative to our tight little novels of social manners. The energy and excess which would probably not be tolerated in an English writer present no problems when they come from a Latin. Garcia Marquez has revitalised that dead phrase 'larger than life'. His characters eat more voraciously than real people, they make love more noisily, they live more adventurously and to a much greater age. They survive firing squads, suicide attempts, massive doses of poison. They experience the worst weather the world has ever known…. Garcia Marquez's love of statistics helps normalise the abnormal and is a key factor in his...