Netflix’s One Hundred Years of Solitude teaser features one of the most influential lines in modern literature

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

So begins Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. The iconic opening refrain is also used in the first teaser trailer for Netflix’s forthcoming TV adaptation, released on Wednesday (17 April).

The novel’s first sentence is one of the most admired in modern literature for the way it immediately grips the reader.

Writing for The Independent in 2009, the American author TC Boyle eloquently recalled reading Márquez’s famous novel for the first time.

“I can still recall the excitement of stretching out my long undernourished frame on a very doggy sofa in front of the fire and coming upon the exquisite opening sentence (which I am quoting from the very copy I then held, which is, as you can imagine, much the worse for wear): ‘Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.’

“This is the sort of opening that effervesces in the reader’s brain (Firing squad? Discover ice?) and, of course, it leads on to one of the most original and pleasingly interleafed narratives our literature has yet given us.”

He continued: “I was just then beginning to fumble towards discovering myself as a fiction writer then, and plunging into Gabriel Garcia Marquez was as jaw-dropping an experience as plunging into the sea with mask and snorkel and for the first time seeing revealed all the secrets and beauties that lie beneath.”

Márquez’s opening line was also the subject of a blog post for Literary Hub in 2019 by the Trinidadian author Claire Adam (Golden Child).

“By the end of the sentence, those first three words, many years later, quietly reverberate with added meaning, because they contain almost the sum total of this man’s life, having almost reached its end,” she wrote.

“There’s a pathos in those words, depicting a character in his final moments, simultaneously reaching back across this great expanse of time – and that, in itself, is a transcendence of time – and, on the other hand, having a complete knowledge of his future. All this is captured in this single elegant sentence, this brief moment when he is able to see the whole stretch of his life, from end to end.”

Since it was first published, One Hundred Years of Solitude has been translated into 46 languages and sold more than 50 million copies.

An official synopsis from Netflix reads: “Married against their parents’ wishes, cousins José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán leave their village behind and embark on a long journey in search of a new home. Accompanied by friends and adventurers, their journey culminates with the founding of a utopian town on the banks of a river of prehistoric stones that they baptize Macondo. Several generations of the Buendía lineage will mark the future of this mythical town, tormented by madness, impossible loves, a bloody and absurd war, and the fear of a terrible curse that condemns them, without hope, to one hundred years of solitude.”

In the trailer, we hear Aureliano Babilonia as he reads from the mythical diary of Melquiades and are transported to Macondo to witness Colonel Aureliano Buendía standing before a firing squad while he remembers when his father took him to discover ice.

Directed by Laura Mora and Alex García López, One Hundred Years of Solitude was filmed entirely in Spanish and shot in Colombia with the support of Márquez’s family.

The cast comprises Claudio Cataño (Colonel Aureliano Buendía adult), Jerónimo Barón (Aureliano Buendía child), Marco González (Jose Arcadio Buendía), Leonardo Soto (José Arcadio son), Susana Morales (Úrsula Iguarán), Ella Becerra (Petronila), Carlos Suaréz (Aureliano Iguarán), Moreno Borja (Melquiades) and Santiago Vásquez (Aureliano Buendía adolescent).

One Hundred Years of Solitude is coming to Netflix later this year.