Living to Tell the Tale

By: Gabriel García Márquez

Narrated by: Christopher Salazar

One of the most acclaimed and revered Nobel laureates begins to tell us the story of his life....

Living to Tell the Tale spans Gabriel García Márquez’s life from his birth in 1927 through the start of his career as a writer to the moment in the 1950s when he proposed to the woman who would become his wife. It has the shape, the quality, and the vividness of a conversation with the listener - a tale of people, places, and events as they occur to him: the colorful stories of his eccentric family members; the great influence of his mother and maternal grandfather; his consuming career in journalism, and the friends and mentors who encouraged him; the myths and mysteries of his beloved Colombia; personal details, undisclosed until now, that would appear later, transmuted and transposed, in his fiction; and, above all, his fervent desire to become a writer. And, as in his fiction, the narrator here is an inspired observer of the physical world, able to make clear the emotions and passions that lie at the heart of a life - in this instance, his own.

Living to Tell the Tale is a radiant, powerful, and beguiling memoir that gives us the formation of Gabriel García Márquez as a writer and as a man.

©2002 Gabriel García Márquez and the heirs of Gabriel García Márquez. Translation © 2003 by Gabriel García Márquez (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing

interesting how life informed fiction

it's wonderful to hear 70 chamber pots wasn't just from imagination but for those less interested in his interactions with other writers, family historyand details of his climb to success it can be a bit dry in parts.

As a an aspiring writer, much of it was quite fascinating and I'm glad to have found it.

Very average

It felt like a random wandering without any connection or any sense of understanding who the author was