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60 free One Hundred Years of Solitude trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This One Hundred Years of Solitude trivia quiz covers Gabriel García Márquez's 1967 masterpiece from the founding of Macondo to the windstorm that wipes it from the earth. The easy questions are the ones any reader remembers: the author's country, the family name, the town, the gypsy who brings ice and magnets, and the ending everyone talks about. From there the set moves through the seven generations of Buendías: the patriarch tied to a chestnut tree speaking Latin, the colonel and his little gold fish, the girl who eats earth, the beauty who ascends to heaven while folding sheets, the seventeen Aurelianos marked with ash crosses, and the yellow butterflies that follow a mechanic. The harder questions are for devoted fans and literature students: the drive to Acapulco that García Márquez abandoned to write the book, the grandparents behind Melquíades' style, the Buenos Aires publisher, the translator whose English the author preferred to his own Spanish, the Banana Massacre of 1928 behind the strike scene, the Thousand Days' War, the colours that carry meaning, the sly references to Cortázar and Fuentes, and the Netflix series produced by the author's sons. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the novel, its author and its adaptation before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Classic Literature, Nobel Prize and Latin America quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01One Hundred Years of Solitude was written by an author from which country?
Colombia
Gabriel García Márquez was born in the country's Caribbean region in 1927.
Q 02Which real Colombian town, the author's birthplace, inspired the fictional Macondo?
Aracataca
He spent his childhood there in his grandparents' house.
Q 03How many generations of the Buendía family does the novel follow?
7
The names José Arcadio and Aureliano recur through every generation.
Q 04In which year was the novel first published?
1967
It appeared in Buenos Aires in May of that year.
Q 05Roughly how many copies has the novel sold worldwide?
50 million
It has been translated into 46 languages.
Q 06Where was García Márquez driving with his family when the opening of the book came to him in 1965?
Acapulco
He turned the car around, asked his wife to manage the money, and wrote for a year and a half.
Q 07Whose superstitious beliefs did García Márquez credit as the foundation of the book's style?
His grandmother Tranquilina
His grandfather, a decorated war veteran, shaped his politics instead.
Q 08Which publisher issued the first edition in Buenos Aires?
Editorial Sudamericana
The English translation followed in 1970.
Q 09Who translated the novel into English, in a version the author preferred to his own Spanish?
Gregory Rabassa
The English edition appeared in 1970.
Q 10Which literary movement is the novel considered a defining work of?
Magic realism
The term was coined by German art critic Franz Roh in 1925.
Q 11Which three novelists joined García Márquez as the first names of the Latin American Boom?
Vargas Llosa, Cortázar and Fuentes
They came from Peru, Argentina and Mexico respectively.
Q 12Why do José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula leave their hometown at the start of the story?
He kills a man after a cockfight
Prudencio Aguilar had suggested that José Arcadio was impotent.
Q 13What does José Arcadio Buendía dream of on the riverbank before founding the town?
A city of mirrors
Q 21Which orphaned girl arrives at the Buendía house carrying a bag of her parents' bones and eating earth?
Rebeca
Her earth-eating habit is a condition known as pica.
Q 22Which handsome Italian musician is desired by both Amaranta and her adopted sister?
Pietro Crespi
Amaranta even tries to murder her rival to stop the wedding.
Q 23What happens to Remedios the Beauty one afternoon while folding sheets?
She ascends to heaven
Several men had already died of love or lust for her.
What follows the mechanic Mauricio Babilonia everywhere he goes?
By the final page the city of mirrors has become a city of mirages.
Q 14What relation is Úrsula Iguarán to her husband José Arcadio Buendía?
His cousin
Their fear that incest would produce a child with a pig's tail haunts the whole novel.
Q 15Who leads the band of gypsies who bring magnets, telescopes and ice to Macondo?
Melquíades
He later returns from the dead, saying he could not bear the solitude of death.
Q 16Where do the gypsies report that their leader has died, before he turns up alive again?
Singapore
He settles in the Buendía house and begins writing his mysterious parchments.
Q 17To what is the mad patriarch José Arcadio Buendía tied for years until his death?
A chestnut tree
By then he speaks only Latin.
Q 18What does the disillusioned Colonel Aureliano Buendía spend his last years making in his workshop?
Tiny gold fish
He makes them, melts them down and makes them again.
Q 19How many sons, all named Aureliano, does the Colonel father during his wars?
17
They are later assassinated, identified by permanent Ash Wednesday crosses on their foreheads.
Q 20What mark allows the Colonel's sons to be identified and murdered?
An Ash Wednesday cross that never fades
They received the ash on their foreheads together and it never faded.
Yellow butterflies
They follow his lover Meme too for a while.
Q 25What excuse does Fernanda give when she has Mauricio Babilonia shot?
He was a chicken thief
She then sends Meme to a convent, where the girl stays mute for life.
Q 26Fernanda del Carpio was chosen as the most beautiful of how many girls?
5,000
She comes to Macondo to compete with Remedios the Beauty for carnival queen.
Q 27Who is the only survivor of the massacre of striking banana workers?
José Arcadio Segundo
Afterwards no one in town will believe the massacre ever happened.
Q 28The killing of striking plantation workers in the novel is based on which real event?
The Banana Massacre of 1928
Colombian troops fired on United Fruit Company strikers at Ciénaga in December 1928.
Q 29How many dead does the novel claim the banana massacre left?
3,000
The true toll is unknown, though historians believe it exceeded a thousand.
Q 30What does the court solemnly decree about the banana workers after the massacre?
That they did not exist
Six lawyers argue the company never had any workers at all.