Sebastian Shakespeare
Tall Tales
Living To Tell The Tale
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez (trans Edith Grossman)
Jonathan Cape 484pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
Gabriel García Márquez said he found Don Quixote boring until he was advised by a friend to read it every day on the loo. Only then could he relish the work and learn entire episodes by heart. Perhaps that is why the Nobel laureate has given us his own life story in instalments. This is the first volume of a planned trilogy and takes us from his birth in 1927 to the late 1950s. As Fidel Castro declared on the book's publication in Latin America, here at last we have Gabo on Gabo. We also have Gabo on Fidel, Gabo on Sophocles and Gabo on Virginia Woolf. (So taken was García Márquez with Old Lady Woolf that he borrowed the pseudonym Septimus from a character in Mrs Dalloway for his daily newspaper column in 1950.)
There is much to enjoy in this book: the sights, scents and tastes of Colombia; his relationships with family, friends and mentors; and his formative years as a journalist and author. Gabo, the son of a telegraph operator, was the eldest of eleven children. By his own account, he was
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
My latest children's round up for @Lit_Review feat. @LissaKEvans WISHED, @MissDePlume SMALL!, @skyemc_kenna's HEDGWITCH, @emmac2603 ESCAPE... @PhilipPullman's IMAGINATION...
https://literaryreview.co.uk/there-be-giants
Very happy to make my @Lit_Review debut with a review of @WillWiles "The Last Blade Priest" a fast-paced story set in an immersive world with nuanced inter-group dynamics and humane characters
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mountain-duel
I have a review of Hugh Brody’s powerful memoir Landscapes of Silence in the latest @Lit_Review https://literaryreview.co.uk/cold-comforts-3