Italo Svevo Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Joyce's seminal novel "Ulysses". "Confessions of Zeno" never looks outside the narrow confines of Trieste, much like Joyce's work, which rarely left Dublin in the last years of Ireland's time as part of the United Kingdom. Svevo brings a keenly sardonic wit to his observations of Trieste and, in particular, to his hero, an indifferent man who cheats on his wife, lies to his psychoanalyst and is trying to explain himself to his psychoanalyst by revisiting his memories. There is a final connection between Svevo and the character Cosini. Cosini sought psychoanalysis, he said, in
The General in His Labyrinth the first time. The General never leaves South America. He finishes his journey in Santa Marta, too weak to continue and with only his doctor and his closest aides by his side. He dies in poverty, a shadow of the man who liberated much of the continent. The leading character in the novel is "the General", also called "the Liberator". García Márquez only once names his protagonist as Simón Bolívar, the famous historical figure, whose full title was General Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios, on whom the General's character is based. The novel's portrait of