Living to Tell the Tale

Westminister, Maryland, U.S.A.: Alfred a Knopf Inc - A Borzoi Book, 2003. First Edition Stated . Hard Back. Very Good/Very Good. 6" x 9 1/2. 483 Pages not Indexed. Maroon boards with silver spine and front lettering. Tight square book with no defects noted. In this long-awaited first volume of a planned trilogy, Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez begins to tell the story of his own life. It spans his birth in 1927, the start of his career as a writer, and 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. This a radiant, powerful, and beguiling memoir that gives us the formation of the author as a writer and as a man.