In this exhaustive and enlightening biography—nearly two decades in the making—Gerald Martin dexterously traces the life and times of one of the twentieth century’s greatest literary titans, Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez.
Martin chronicles the particulars of an extraordinary life, from his upbringing in backwater Colombia and early journalism career, to the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude at age forty, and the wealth and fame that followed. Based on interviews with more than three hundred of Garcia Marquez’s closest friends, family members, fellow authors, and detractors—as well as the many hours Martin spent with ‘Gabo’ himself—the result is a revelation of both the writer and the man. It is as gripping as any of Gabriel García Márquez’s powerful journalism, as enthralling as any of his acclaimed and beloved fiction.
Prologue: From Origins Obscure (1800–1899)
Chapter 1: Of Colonels and Lost Causes (1899–1927)
Chapter 2: The House at Aracataca (1927–1928)
Chapter 3: Holding His Grandfather’s Hand (1929–1937)
Chapter 4: Schooldays: Barranquilla, Sucre, Zipaquirá (1938–1946)
Chapter 5: The University Student and the Bogotazo (1947–1948)
Chapter 6: Back to the Costa: An Apprentice Journalist in Cartagena (1948–1949)
Chapter 7: Barranquilla, a Bookseller and a Bohemian Group (1950–1953)
Chapter 8: Back to Bogotá: The Ace Reporter (1954–1955)
Chapter 9: The Discovery of Europe: Rome (1955)
Chapter 10: Hungry in Paris: La Bohème (1956–1957)
Chapter 11: Beyond the Iron Curtain: Eastern Europe During the Cold War (1957)
Chapter 12: Venezuela and Colombia: The Birth of Big Mama (1958–1959)
Chapter 13: The Cuban Revolution and the USA (1959–1961)
Chapter 14: Escape to Mexico (1961–1964)
Chapter 15: Melquíades the Magician: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1965–1966)
Chapter 16: Fame at Last (1966–1967)
Chapter 17: Barcelona and the Latin American Boom: Between Literature and Politics (1967–1970)
Chapter 19: Chile and Cuba: García Márquez Opts for the Revolution (1973–1979)
Chapter 20: Return to Literature: Chronicle of a Death Foretold and the Nobel Prize (1980–1982)
Chapter 21: The Frenzy of Renown and the Fragrance of Guava: Love in the Time of Cholera (1982–1985)
Chapter 23: Back to Macondo? News of a Historic Catastrophe (1990–1996)
Chapter 24: García Márquez at Seventy and Beyond: Memoirs and Melancholy Whores (1996–2005)
Epilogue: Immortality—The New Cervantes (2006–2007)