Living To Tell The Tale
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Knopf $250
It's easy to lose yourself in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's autobiography because it's as mesmerising as his novels. In his trademark lyrical prose the author reveals his delight in recounting fantastic adventures, a plethora of eccentric characters and, as always, an exploration of the myths of his beloved Colombia.
This is the first in the Nobel Prize winner's autobiographical trilogy, and it opens as the 22-year-old Garcia Marquez and his mother take the gruelling journey to his grandparents' former home in the hope of selling the crumbling property that sits in an even more bereft town.
Although Garcia Marquez portrays his parents with love and humour, as the eldest of 11 children he bears frequent witness to the family's lurch between financial crises. Many of the stories heard from his relatives, and later as a journalist, give Garcia Marquez the raw material and characters we see in such works as 100 Years Of Solitude, Chronicle Of A Death Foretold and Of Love And Other Demons.