The General in His Labyrinth explores the labyrinth of Bolívar's life through the narrative of his memories, in which "despair, sickness, and death inevitably win out over love, health, and life". Following the success of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera", García Márquez decided to write about the "Great Liberator" after reading an unfinished novel by his friend Álvaro Mutis. He borrowed the setting—Bolívar's voyage down the Magdalena River in 1830—from Mutis. García Márquez spent two years researching the subject, encompassing the extensive memoirs of Bolívar's Irish aide-de-camp, Daniel Florencio O'Leary, as well as numerous other historical documents and
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon the age of AIDS. Despite the generally excellent reviews, by 1999 the "Chicago Tribune" had called the novel "unjustly obscure". The "Los Angeles Times" felt the book fell short of "cult" status because it came 20 years too late to be part of the free love and gay liberation movements. The book's status, and Spanbauer's reputation has an author, have both risen rapidly in the last 10 years. One reviewer noted that "Spanbauer made his mark" as an author with the novel. Robert Walter, director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, quoted a portion of the novel as some of the