Much good criticism of Mrquez came in the wake of _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ and the perception of his fiction has been dominated by that novel. It seemed the implicit goal to which the earlier fiction has been striving. By concentrating on the later novels, including _The General in his Labyrinth_, this study brings out the internal dialogue between the novels so that _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ then stands out, like Don Quixote in Cervantes' oeuvre, as untypical yet more deeply representative. Behind the popular impact of its 'magical realism' lies Mrquez' abiding meditation on the nature of fictional and historical truth.