 The General in His Labyrinth was relatively poorly received by the general public in the United States , despite the praise of critics . Critic Ilan Stavans , who himself praised the book as " one of the writer 's most sophisticated and accomplished " , attributes this to the novel 's time period and to its <unk> of historical information , neither of which proved attractive to English @-@ speaking readers . Isabel Alvarez Borland notes that , like Stavans , " critics in the United States have largely celebrated García Márquez 's portrait of this national hero and considered it a tour de force " ; but she also observes that in Latin America the book received more mixed reviews , ranging from " outrage to <unk> praise " . 
