Mercedes and Gabo’s ofrenda,
November 2020, Year of the Plague.
© Pia Elizondo
Chronology
1927 Gabriel García Márquez is born on March 6, 1927, to Gabriel Eligio García and Luisa Santiaga Márquez in Aracataca, Colombia. The eldest child of a large family, he spends his early years living with his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, a former colonel, would later inspire García Márquez’s novella No One Writes to the Colonel.
1936 After his grandfather’s death, García Márquez goes to live with his parents in Sucre.
1940 García Márquez moves with his family to the port city of Barranquilla and starts high school.
1947 García Márquez studies law at the National University in Bogotá. Two of his short stories are published in the newspaper El Espectador.
1948–50 After two years of political conflict in Colombia, riots force the National University to close. García Márquez returns to Barranquilla, where he works as a journalist. He starts writing his first novel, Leaf Storm.
1954 García Márquez is hired to write for El Espectador. He publishes a series of articles about a Colombian sailor who survived a high-seas shipwreck, which causes controversy in Colombia.
1955–57 Leaf Storm is published in 1955. García Márquez moves to Paris to work as a foreign correspondent. During this period, he travels to the Eastern bloc countries to report on various issues.
1958 García Márquez returns to Colombia. He marries Mercedes Barcha in Barranquilla. They remain married until his death.
1959 García Márquez travels to Cuba as a rank and file journalist to cover the Cuban Revolution for a Colombian newspaper. Mercedes gives birth to their first son, Rodrigo.
1960–61 García Márquez lives in NY briefly as correspondent of the Cuban press agency Prensa Latina before moving his family to Mexico. His novel No One Writes to the Colonel is published in 1961.
1962–66 The couple’s second son, Gonzalo, is born in 1962. García Márquez spends eighteen months writing One Hundred Years of Solitude.
1967 One Hundred Years of Solitude is published in June. The book is an immediate success, selling millions of copies worldwide and earning García Márquez much acclaim. The family moves to Spain.
1975 The Autumn of the Patriarch is published.
1979–81 García Márquez divides his time between Colombia and Mexico. He begins writing Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
1982 García Márquez wins the Noble Prize for Literature.
1983–87 Love in the Time of Cholera is published in 1985. García Márquez helps establish the International Film School in Cuba. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is adapted for film, directed by Francesco Rosi.
1989 The General in His Labyrinth is published.
1994 García Márquez helps establish the Foundation for New Ibero-American Journalism to support democratic, independent journalism in Latin America.
1996 News of a Kidnapping, a nonfiction account of several kidnapping cases in Colombia by drug lord Pablo Escobar, is published.
1999 García Márquez battles lymphatic cancer. He goes into remission.
2002–04 His memoir, Living to Tell the Tale, is published in 2002. His final novel, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, is published two years later.
2010–12 Rumors circulate that García Márquez is writing a new novel, but his younger brother, Jaime, denies the reports. It is revealed to the public that the author is suffering from dementia and can no longer write.
2014 García Márquez dies at his home in Mexico City.
2020 Mercedes Barcha dies in Mexico City.
Selected Bibliography
No One Writes to the Colonel, and Other Stories. Translated from the Spanish by J. S. Bernstein. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.
One Hundred Years of Solitude. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
Leaf Storm, and Other Stories. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.
The Autumn of the Patriarch. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
Innocent Eréndira, and Other Stories. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.
In Evil Hour. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. New York: Knopf, 1983.
Collected Stories. Translated from the Spanish by J. S. Bernstein and Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor. Translated from the Spanish by Randolph Hogan. New York: Knopf, 1986.
Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littín. Translated from the Spanish by Asa Zatz. New York: Holt, 1987.
Love in the Time of Cholera. Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. New York: Knopf, 1988.
The General in His Labyrinth. Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. New York: Knopf, 1990.
Collected Novellas. Translated from the Spanish by J. S. Bernstein and Gregory Rabassa. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.
Strange Pilgrims: Twelve Stories. Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. New York: Knopf, 1993.
Of Love and Other Demons. Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. New York: Knopf, 1995.
News of a Kidnapping. Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. New York: Knopf, 1997.
Living to Tell the Tale. Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. New York: Knopf, 2003.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores. Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. New York: Knopf, 2005.
The Scandal of the Century, and Other Writings. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean. New York: Knopf, 2019.
About the Author
RODRIGO GARCIA was born in Colombia, grew up in Mexico City, and attended Harvard University. His feature films as a writer and director include Nine Lives, Albert Nobbs, and Four Good Days. Garcia has directed television series such as Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, and the pilot of Big Love, for which he received an Emmy nomination. He also directed several episodes for HBO’s In Treatment, where, in addition to director, he served as a writer, executive producer, and series showrunner. Garcia currently resides in Los Angeles with his family.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
A Note on the Cover
In creating this cover, I wanted to show the tenderness of memory and the depth of loss. I chose collage for its ephemeral qualities. Working with cut paper is a delicate process, and, as in life, things don’t always go as planned. Paper is sensitive material; it can be ripped, destroyed, degraded with only a touch. The empty silhouettes of Gabriel and Mercedes, cut from an old photo, demonstrate how collage is powered by absence. Even though the form itself is about assembly and reconstruction, the gaps and voids inevitably left during the process give collage greater meaning. Combined with a reinterpretation of the couples’ garden and blooming yellow roses (García Márquez’s favorite flower), I sought to capture the book’s reflective mood and elegiac tone.
—Alicia Tatone
An imprint dedicated to publishing international voices, offering readers a chance to encounter other lives and other points of view via the language of the imagination.
Copyright
A FAREWELL TO GABO AND MERCEDES. Copyright © 2021 by Rodrigo Garcia. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to
the following for permission to reprint from previously published material:
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Translated by Gregory Rabassa. English translation copyright © 1970 by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Gabriel García Márquez, The Autumn of the Patriarch. Translated by Gregory Rabassa. English translation copyright © 1976 Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera. Translated by Edith Grossman. English translation copyright © 1988 by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House.
Gabriel García Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth. Translated by Edith Grossman. English translation copyright © 1990 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House.
Cover design: Alicia Tatone
Cover image (flowers): Getty Images / NSA Digital Archive
FIRST HARPERVIA EDITION PUBLISHED IN 2021
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: García, Rodrigo, 1959– author.
Title: A farewell to Gabo and Mercedes : a son’s memoir / Rodrigo Garcia.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : HarperVia, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021010396 | ISBN 9780063158337 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780063158313 (paperback) | ISBN 9780063158320 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: García Márquez, Gabriel, 1927–2014—Family. | Barcha, Mercedes. | García, Rodrigo, 1959– | Novelists, Colombian—Biography.
Classification: LCC PQ8180.17.A73 Z664817 2021 | DDC 863/.64—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010396
* * *
Digital Edition JULY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-315832-0
Version 06142021
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-315833-7
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida
Uttar Pradesh 201 301
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes Page 7
