«Solitude & Company» by Silvana Paternostro

An oral history biography of the legendary Latin American writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Márquez, brimming with atmosphere and insight

Irreverent and hopeful, Solitude & Company recounts the life of a boy from the provinces who decided to become a writer. This is the story of how he did it, how little Gabito became Gabriel Garcia Márquez, and of how Gabriel Garcia Márquez survived his own self-creation.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first, BC, before Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude), we hear from his siblings and those who were friends before Garcia Márquez became the universally loved Latin American icon. The second part, AC, describes the man behind the legend that Garcia Márquez became. From Aracataca, to Baranquila, to Bogota, to Paris, to Mexico City, the solitude that Garcia Márquez needed to produce his masterpiece turns out to have been something of a raucous party whenever he wasn't actually writing. Here are the writers Tomás Eloy Martinez, Edmundo Paz Soldán, and William and Rose Styron; legendary Spanish agent Carmen Balcells; the translator of A Hundred Years of Solitude, Gregory Rabassa; Gabo's brothers Luis Enrique, Jaime, Eligio, and Gustavo, and his sisters Aida and Margot; Maria Luisa Elio, to whom A Hundred Years of Solitude is dedicated; and many others.