LONDON (AFP) — The first "comprehensive" biography of Nobel prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian author of "Love in the Time of Cholera," went on sale in London on Monday, publishers Bloomsbury said.
British academic Gerald Martin wrote the book after 15 years of research and interviews with at least 300 people, including the writer's mother, wife, children and friends, among them former Cuban president Fidel Castro.
The publishers said Garcia Marquez, who also wrote "One Hundred Years of Solitude," views Martin as his "official" biographer and they had regular conversations over the last decade and a half.
"Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A life" will focus on the "tension" in the 81-year-old writer's life "between celebrity and literary quality, between politics and writing, and between power, solitude and love," Bloomsbury said.
Martin, a literary critic and Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Pittsburgh in the United States, also spoke to writers Alvaro Mutis, Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa for the book, as well as several Colombian presidents and former Spanish prime minister Felipe Gonzalez.
Marquez won the Nobel prize for literature in 1982.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
