COLUMN: Gabriel García Márquez, the Story-Teller of the Country of the War Without End

[Judi Lynn]

COLUMN: Gabriel García Márquez, the Story-Teller of the Country of the War Without End
By Diana Cariboni

MONTEVIDEO, Apr 18 2014 (IPS) - The first time I read Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) was when I was proofreading the galleys of “The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor”, which the Editorial Sudamericana was getting ready to reprint in Argentina.

I was working in the offices of the Sudamericana publishing house, in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of San Telmo, where I could find myself editing a gothic novel or a literary classic or a work by the Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, due to the varied menu. I was 17 years old and I was mesmerised by that short tale, a journalistic report by García Márquez published in a number of instalments in the El Espectador newspaper in Bogotá, in 1955, which came out as a book in 1970.

The complete title was “The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor: Who Drifted on a Liferaft for Ten Days Without Food or Water, Was Proclaimed a National Hero, Kissed by Beauty Queens, Made Rich Through Publicity, and Then Spurned by the Government and Forgotten for All Time”. Through the first-person account of the exploits of the survivor, García Márquez denounced that the shipwreck of the sailor and his seven companions, who drowned, was due to overweight contraband on the Colombian Navy’s destroyer Caldas.

Colombia at the time was under a military dictatorship, so the report led to the closure of the newspaper and the first of García Márquez’s various periods of exile. The last one began in 1997. He never returned to live in Colombia.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/04/column-gabriel-garcia-marquez-story-teller-country-war-without-end/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Marquez has left behind a manuscript

Marquez has left behind a manuscript
April 24, 2014

MEXICO CITY: Novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez left behind an unpublished manuscript that he chose not to print while he was alive, an editor told The Associated Press on Tuesday as the writer’s compatriots held a musical tribute to him in his native Colombia.

Cristobal Pera, editorial director of Penguin Random House Mexico, said that Garcia Marquez’s family has not yet decided whether to Allow the book to come out posthumously, or which publishing house would get the rights.

Garcia Marquez died at his Mexico City home on April 17.

The manuscript has a working title of We’ll See Each Other in August, (En Agosto Nos Vemos).

An excerpt of the manuscript published in Spain’s La Vanguardia newspaper contains what appears to be an opening chapter, describing a trip taken by a 50-ish married woman who visits her mother’s grave on a tropical island every year.

More:
http://gulftoday.ae/portal/77c64389-1b85-41bb-95c8-71c3e7d8d509.aspx