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''The Autumn of the Patriarch'' is a 1975 novel by Creator/GabrielGarciaMarquez (of ''Literature/OneHundredYearsOfSolitude'' fame) about the life of a ruthless dictator in an unnamed Caribbean country. The book is written in a long, drawn-out way, exposing the thoughts of the dictator, in what has been called a poem on prose, where it’s stated that even the powerfuls are LonelyAtTheTop.

!!This book provides examples of:
* AxCrazy: Curiously, not the dictator, who’s stated to have only killed one person by is own hand; but José Ignacio Saenz de la Barra, who regularly sends him the heads of opponents.
%%* BananaRepublic
%%* BathroomStallGraffiti: At the end, they become the only contact with reality the dictator has.
%%* BigFancyHouse: The dictator’s residence.
* BodyDouble: Patricio Aragonés. The dictator pardons his life because Aragonés can impersonate him in public.
%%* ColdBloodedTorture: José Ignacio Saenz de la Barra’s favorite method.
%%* CrapsackWorld
* DarkMistress: Leticia Nazareno, who’s curiously a nun. The dictator kidnaps and marries her and she gives him a son. After that, she starts enjoying all the spoils of her sweet new life, at least until the people get tired of her.
%%* ElderlyImmortal: The dictator.
* EternalRecurrence: Part of the novel's approach is that some events tend to repeat themselves in one way or another.
* EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: And yet, most of them don’t make her a saint after her death.
* ForegoneConclusion: The dictator dies. The first few pages tell you this. However, they also tell you that he died for the second time.
%%* TheGeneralissimo
%%* UsefulNotes/LeagueOfNations: They appear in the story, as useless as ever.
%%* LonelyAtTheTop
* MagicRealism: The only thing that explains that a dictator has more than 2,000 years or that the Americans can take away the ocean just like that. After all, it’s Márquez we’re talking about here.
%%* NastyParty
%%* NoNameGiven: The dictator.
* AnOddPlaceToSleep: The dictator sleeps on the floor, using his hand as a pillow.
* PlatonicCave: One character worries about what will happen if the dictator is no more, because since he has been in power more than a hundred years, they don’t know anything else about the real life.
* PsychoForHire: José Ignacio Saenz de la Barra.
* RealityWarper: The dictator has such power that when he orders the time of day changed from 3 to 8 in the morning, the roses open two hours before dew time.
* SemperFi: The U.S. Marines helped the dictator take power, and their ship docked on the bay gives the first part of the book an ominous feeling (yeah, they’re a bunch of {{Jerkass}}es here).
* ShadowDictator: The dictator. Contrary to the usual examples of this trope, however, we know he exists because... well, he's the main character.
%%* TheStarscream: General Rodrigo de Aguilar.
%%* WallOfText
* WantonCrueltyToTheCommonComma: The book is written as a flowing tract, with a lot of commas but very few periods. As a consecuence of that, all the dialogues are included in among the many commas.
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