The Scandal of the Century

April 15, 2019
An eye-opening collection of articles that reveal Gabo the journalist. New Yorker staff writer Jon Lee Anderson sets up this eclectic and transportive selection of 50 journalistic pieces from 1950 to 1984 by the Colombian Nobel laureate, noting in his introduction that journalism was García Márquez's "first true love." In fact, the beloved novelist (1927-2014) called it the "best profession in the world." Editor Pera confesses that he purposefully chose pieces that "contain a latent narrative tension between journalism and literature" to showcase the author's "unstoppable narrative impulse." The titular article, the longest in the collection, written for El Spectador, which published García Márquez's first short stories, is an account of the mysterious death of a young Italian woman in Rome in 1953. The atmospheric, serialized piece is told in chapter form and might owe something to García Márquez's love of two "perfect" short stories he references in "Like Souls in Purgatory": W.W. Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw" and Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar." Many of the articles confront political and social issues, including the U.S. blockade of Cuba, the Sandinista raid in Managua, Nicaragua, the international trafficking of women, the death of his beloved Magdalena River from pollution and deforestation, and the Soviet intervention in Hungary. In "Misadventures of a Writer of Books," García Márquez admits that a writer "has no other revolutionary obligation than to write well." He rages about bad teachers of literature who "spout nonsense," calls the Nobel Prize a "senile laurel," is convinced "Japanese novels have something in common with mine," praises "self-sacrificing" translators as "brilliant accomplice[s]," and mourns the death of John Lennon. In the lovely "My Personal Hemingway," García Márquez recalls seeing him across a Paris street in 1957 and shouting out, "Maaeeestro!" The text is elegantly translated by McLean, and García Márquez fans will welcome these fresh and lively examples of his beautiful, lyrical writing.

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May 13, 2019
This incisive collection of journalistic pieces from the 1950s to the ’80s shows the acclaimed novelist and short story writer García Márquez (1927–2014) in his original guise, as reporter, which he called “the best job in the world.” Even in short-form pieces, the Colombian Nobel laureate’s skill at creating character, mood, and setting shines through, whether he is commenting on water shortages in Caracas, describing Budapest soon after the Soviet invasion, or exposing sex trafficking and prostitution in Paris. The early pieces are for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador, which afforded García Márquez his first opportunity to travel abroad, as a roving correspondent in Europe, and the later examples mostly come from his column in the Spanish newspaper El País. The centerpiece is the eponymous work, a compilation of several columns from Rome describing a young woman’s mysterious death, a detective novel-like narrative accompanied by perceptive commentary on the role of press and public opinion. As with any collection, some selections are more successful than others, but all reflect García Márquez’s humor, graceful style, and ability to find the human interest in every topic. His many Anglophone fans will be pleased to have these newly translated examples of his writing to read.

May 15, 2019
Journalism was Nobel laureate Garc�a M�rquez's first true love as a writer. This ensnaring volume gathers 50 incisive and surprising articles and essays published from 1950 to 1984, a small yet mighty sampling of his extensive nonfiction corpus. Here is Garc�a M�rquez's mastery of storytelling and sardonic humor, as well as evidence of his embrace of the absurd and the inexplicable and his fluency in offering the telling detail. The title piece is a wry and gripping Felliniesque chronicle of a young woman's mysterious death in 1953 on an Italian beach, one of many dispatches Garc�a M�rquez wrote for a Bogot� paper after being sent abroad to evade the trouble his reporting sometimes catalyzed. No subject was too humble, so deep was his curiosity about life, though his was truly a global perspective. The World's Most Famous Year juxtaposes an array of 1957 events, including Humphrey Bogart's funeral and the banning of rock 'n' roll on Cuban television. Other pieces examine paradoxes in Caracas, a Sandinista operation, and life in Mexico. Whatever his focus, Garc�a M�rquez is discerning, mesmerizing, and provocative, his timeless journalism works of art and dissent.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)