First edition.

8vo, pp. 271, green cloth, the spine lettered in white and gilt, a little bumped. A Very Good copy in dust jacket with promotional gilt band preserved. Jacket with a little shelf wear and sunning to spine. With the stamp of Marquez’s literary agent Carmen Balcells (Barcelona) to a prelim.

García Márquez was inspired to write this novel when he witnessed the flight of Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958. According to García Márquez, the novel is a "poem on the solitude of power" as it follows the life of an eternal dictator known as the General. Although the geographical setting of the story is not clear, the imaginary country is situated somewhere in the Caribbean.

Maschler was Marquez’s first publisher in England.