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encompassing the extensive memoirs of Bolívar's Irish aide-de-camp, Daniel Florencio O'Leary, as well as numerous other historical documents and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 Time Traveler's Wife two people can feel as if they've known each other their entire lives". Robert Nathan's "Portrait of Jennie", as novel, or film, is another obvious comparison, although Jennie, as a ghost, travels time in one direction, not randomly. Elements of the plot, particularly the list, bear comparison with Heinlein's 1941 By His Bootstraps, and in turn, with River Song's diary in the long-running, British sci-fi show Doctor Who. Niffenegger identifies the themes of the novel as "mutants, love, death, amputation, sex, and time". Reviewers have focused on love, loss, and time. As Charlie Lee-Potter writes in "The Independent", the novel