Gabriel García Márquez (b. 1927) is a sophisticated literary artist who has attained broad popularity. His masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, has sold tens of millions of copies world wide. His later works have enjoyed equally astounding sales. His achievement as an author received the highest official recognition with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

Conversastions with Gabriel García Márquez starts with the years just following the phenomenal success of One Hundred Years of Solitude and goes on through his most recent, turn-of-the-century exchanges. We learn a great deal about his impoverished childhood, his Caribbean roots, his life as an indifferent student, his apprenticeship as a journalist, his days of hunger in Europe, his primary literary influences, the inspiration that led to the writing of his most renowned novel, the difficulties brought by fame, and his leftist opinions. Works such as The Autumn of the Patriarch, Love in the Time of Cholera, The General in His Labyrinth, and News of a Kidnapping are discussed in detail.

When interviewed by journalists from Hispanic countries, García Márquez opens up and chats spontaneously and frankly about all sorts of topics, including himself. Some of those conversations, now translated into English for the first time, are gathered in this volume. They offer a fascinating glimpse of the Colombian genius at his most down-to-earth, informal, and relaxed. Taken together with seminal pieces from The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review, and other English-language periodicals, Conversations with Gabriel García Márquez offers a nuanced, multifaceted view of one of contemporary literature's greatest masters.