Independent, UK

Gabriel García Márquez: A Life, By Gerald Martin

Oct 24 -- Master fabulist Gabriel García Márquez, known as Gabo, insisted that his fiction was "appallingly" real, while his early European and American readers enjoyed the tropical fantasies.

24 de octubre de 2008

One Hundred Years of Solitude was read through psychedelic lenses: through Mervyn Peake and Carlos Castaneda. His hyperbolic realism needs explaining, and a biography should be the best way. But beside imagining Colombian Caribbean life, García Márquez became intensely political, without letting his left-wing, pro-Cuban views dictate his fiction. The norm in Latin American fiction up to the 1960s had been politicised novels, often at odds with the demands of art. Again, biography may be the best way to delve into this deliberate omission.

Want to read the full review? Just click here