One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

A sort of a bible for the religion of Solitude, the most basic and human spiritual text. Begins with a creation myth: the founding of the holy city, Macondo, built from the swampy ground by a primitive, incestuous family named Buendia. A family that spawns a whole race of beings: a community cursed by melancholy, war, insanity, and solitude.
I read somewhere, in relation to this book, the term "magical realism". I can't think of a better term to describe Marquez's delicious style of writing. Some times you think you are reading a dry historical document, other times you feel it is a humorously sly collective memoir of sorts...then, it turns into a fairy tale.
Difficult in the beginning, I think, but at a certain point, it begins to enchant. If it is at all possible to sort through the muck of the Marquez muddle, which consists largely of multiple characters of multiple generations bearing the same (or maddeningly similar) names, and events of confused chronology, then it is thoroughly worth the effort for this amazing story told in amazing language.