In this long-awaited first volume of a planned trilogy, the most
acclaimed and revered living Nobel laureate begins to tell us the story
of his life.
Like all his work, Living to Tell the Tale is a magnificent piece of
writing. It spans Gabriel García Márquez's life from his birth in 1927
through the start of his career as a writer to the moment in the 1950s
when he proposed to the woman who would become his wife. It has the
shape, the quality, and the vividness of a conversation with the
reader--a tale of people, places, and events as they occur to him: the
colorful stories of his eccentric family members; the great influence of
his mother and maternal grandfather; his consuming career in journalism,
and the friends and mentors who encouraged him; the myths and mysteries
of his beloved Colombia; personal details, undisclosed until now, that
would appear later, transmuted and transposed, in his fiction; and,
above all, his fervent desire to become a writer. And, as in his
fiction, the narrator here is an inspired observer of the physical
world, able to make clear the emotions and passions that lie at the
heart of a life--in this instance, his own.
Living to Tell the Tale is a radiant, powerful, and beguiling memoir
that gives us the formation of Gabriel García Márquez as a writer and as
a man.
