"At the end of 2000, I spent three months traveling around Latin America-- Barranquilla, Cartagena, Bogotá, Mexico City-- to interview friends and relatives for an oral biography of Gabriel García Márquez. Autobiography is central to García Márquez's fiction, and I was curious how the people (many of whom make appearances in his work) who knew Gabriel García Márquez as a young man would remember him." -Silvana Paternostro