Sebastian Shakespeare
Tall Tales
Living To Tell The Tale
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez (trans Edith Grossman)
Jonathan Cape 484pp £18.99
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
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk