Living to Tell the Tale

Living to Tell the Tale

3.87 of 5 stars 3.87  ·  rating details  ·  3,770 ratings  ·  295 reviews
No writer alive today exerts the magical appeal of Gabriel García Márquez. Now, in the long-awaited first volume of his autobiography, he tells the story of his life from his birth in 1927 to the moment in the 1950s when he proposed to his wife. The result is as spectacular as his finest fiction.

Here is García Márquez’s shimmering evocation of his childhood home of Aracat...more
Paperback, 544 pages
Published October 12th 2004 by Vintage (first published January 1st 2002)
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Tasneem


لو كان هناك نجمة سادسة و سابعة وعاشرة .. لما تردددت لحظة

إنه غابرييل جارسيا ماركيز.. الذي أحمد الله كثيراً أني عشت في الزمن الذي عاش فيه ليروي!


و بالرغم من أن هذه الرواية ليست رواية و إنما جزء حي من حياته و روحه.. إلا أنا كرهتُ جدا انتهائها و أؤمن تمام الإيمان أن هناك الكثير و الكثير الذي لم يكتب بعد و أريد و بشدة أن أعرفه...


يا مين يقول لماركيز أن يُكمل حكيه عن حياته لـ أجل النبــي

:D


Zaki
I remember absolutely nothing from this book.
Germancho
Este libro son dos. El primero es un reportaje a los pueblos colombianos grandes (como Bogota) y chicos (como Cataca) a traves de los recuerdos de infancia y juventud de GGM. Precisamente uso la palabra reportaje porque es en lo que Garcia Marquez mas brilla: cuenta las aventuras y tropiezos de su familia con una humanidad que solo el puede transmitir. Y no solo la humanidad de los personajes! A traves de la primera parte del libro uno se encuentra con la humanidad intrinseca de un barco de vapo...more
Annie
Garcia Marquez's real life is as full of magic as his fiction. Every event is a well crafted feat of naturalism as he recounts the events that shaped his life. Bright colors and mourning black denote the time and season. Tragedies happen too often. Living life takes determination, good music, good beer and a typewriter. Garcia Marquez shows us how his writing developed in the newsrooms of Bogata. He learned to write irresistible fiction in short form at first and ever expanding lengths.

This fir...more
Amanda
Dec 05, 2007 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: GGM fans
This book was written by my favorite author about being a great author. Perhaps, it is small-minded and greedy of me but, an overwhelming part of me just wants all that easy poetry without experiencing the mountain of work that it requires. It's similar to the reasons I go out to eat without needing to see the kitchen. Though at times, regret failing to do so.
In the end, I'm glad to have read what makes this extraordinary man tick and found myself stalling so I could continue to read the memoir....more
Iceman
Gabriel Garcia Marquez é para mim um escritor esquisito, não só ao nível da composição dos seus textos, como sobretudo devido à estranheza das suas histórias.
Prémio Nobel em 1982, Garcia Marquez assentou toda a sua carreira, enquanto escritor, num género que podemos classificar, ou pelo menos eu classifico-o, do realismo-fantástico, género esse povoado de fantasmas, demónios e situações surrealistas que vão sendo misturadas com o mundo real, dando então origem a um universo onírico, algo confuso...more
Okbah
من بعد تجربتي في قراءة رواية مائة عام من العزلة قبل سنوات بترجمة محمد الحاج خليل بدلا من ترجمة صالح علماني وأنا أتردد وأتروى كثيرا قبل قراءة أي رواية مترجمة خشية الوقوع في الرديء منها وخشية ألا تصلني روح الكاتب الحقيقية التي بثها بين سطورها... وتلك أمنيتنا القديمة المستحيلة :أن نقرأ كل رواية بلغتها الأصلية حتى نتشبع من كاتبها بلا برزخ من ترجمة تحول بيننا وبينه..
هذا ماحدث مع "نعيشها لنرويها" لغارسيا ماركيز.. اذ بقيت على الرف طويلا قبل أن أتناولها.. وقد سبق أن قرأت ترجمات أخرى لرفعت عطفة (المترجم...more
Christy S
García Márquez has come to be known as one of the best writers in modern Latin American literature, and possibly one of the greatest fiction writers of all time. I am in general not a fiction reader, and thus have never accepted the many recommendations to read his works– specifically One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera. Only this year has anything Latin American crept into my repertoire, and I thought this non-fiction work of García Márquez´might win me over to his othe...more
Adela
Îmi aduc aminte că m-am întâlnit fix înainte să plec în Barcelona cu prietena mea Ilinca care mi-a spus că a citit autobiografia lui Marquez și că i-a plăcut foarte mult. Îi spuneam că și eu îmi doresc de mult să o citesc, iar după multe luni mă găsesc scriind recenzia cărții.

M-a suprins foarte tare această carte. S-a dovedit a fi complet diferită față de ceea ce îmi imaginam eu înainte de a o cumpăra. Vivir para contarla prezintă parte din viața lui Gabriel Garcia Marquez așa cum și-o amintește...more
Rowland Bismark
"Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it".

So begins the first volume of the autobiography of Marquez detailing the amazing circumstances and events and characters that filled the first 27 years of his life. Born in Columbia at a time when "people lived in the shadow of poetry", when "poetry (was) the only concrete proof of the existence of man", Marquez was, above all else, a man of letters. He received the Nobel Prize for literature for...more
Elliot Sneider
As you might expect if you have read any of his books, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's memoir is not simply a linear telling of Gabo's childhood and rise to success. On the contrary, the story of his life is told with the same foreshadowing he uses in many of his stories, which he uses to tie together an amazing portrayal of his growth as an artist and a human being. He talks of many of the events and people in his life which influenced the magical-realism which he came to write, and talks about the po...more
Roo78lm
لا أستطيع على وجه الدقة تذكر الكُتّاب و الروائيين الذي قرأت لهم طوال السنوات المنصرمة من حياتي القرائية ، أعني أولئك الذين أعاصرهم الآن ، لأنني لم أكترث شخصياً لكونهم موتى في التُراب أم أحياء عليها ، كانت قرائتي لهم تكفي أحياناً لأشعر بهم أحياء في لحظات ، ثم موتى في لحظات أخرى ، - هذه طريقتي للعبث بالحيوات من حولي - على أية حال ، هذا الأمر لا ينطبق على " غابرييل غاريسا ماركيز ، لسبب ما صبحتُ أكترثُ لكوني أعاصره ، كنت أهمس لنفسي قائلة : لكم أنتِ محظوظة يا روح . لقد إستطعتِ على الأقل معاصرة ماركيز...more
Tifnie
Oct 13, 2010 Tifnie rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Sue
Shelves: autobiography
Thank goodness for second hand books, otherwise I never would have picked up this book to read.

I enjoyed reading this book not only because Love in the Time of Cholera is one of my favorite books, but because Gabriel Garcia Marquez lived his younger years in such a state of celebration and in the truest sense of the word - present.

I dog-eared many pages with references to books that made an impact on his life, couple of which I have read, many of which I haven't, and 1 of which is sitting on my...more
Vivien Fung
Marquez has blown me away on occasion - Love in the Time of Cholera is one of my favourite books - but lately I'm finding that his prose is so good that it's bad. I get lost in it, then lose my interest in the storyline. It's just too dense, too convoluted, beautiful to read but with no landscape to hook me on (see: 100 Years of Solitude, where multiple characters with the same name left me cold). I think some authors use this technique to great effect, but more often than not this doesn't inclu...more
Jill
What is most beautiful about Gabriel Garcia Marquez as a writer is his ability to tell one a story as if it is poetry. EVERY single word falls in beautiful succession to a page of words. LOVE HIM so much.

This biography takes you inside the life of a the man who is hands down the FINEST writer in the Spanish speaking world. He is absolutely on the list of best authors of his generatrion. I had the great fortune of reading this book while vacationing in Cartagena, Columbia where Garcia Marquez has...more
John
This is probably a book for Garcia Marquez aficionados who have already digested several of his novels, as it shows the background to many of the incidents and characters in them. The only difficulty is then working out what is fact and what is fiction, and indeed this book if inevitably not just a strict account of facts. But this doesn't matter, and if you want as accurate a picture of Gabo's life as possible, after reading this go to the bioggraphy by Gerald Martin, which is also a very good...more
Ismaa Khan
Beautiful, eloquent, descriptive, lyrical, intriguing and fascinating! The auto-biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, at least the first 28 years of his life, is a cocktail of fact and fiction, as admitted by the author himself who refers to his faulty memory in it. Nonetheless it is an exceptional memoir by the author of my favorite book “Love in the time of Cholera” and I must compliment both Marquez and his translator Edith Grossman for a job well done.

I took my time reading and enjoying this...more
Amy
If you know Gabriel Garcia Marquez's writing then you'll know that you are getting into a very detailed and lengthy story of his first 30 years with long sentences and lovely adjectives. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and the account of the history of Colombia he gives. It is amazing how much his real life influenced his fiction writing. His love for words and reading is inspiring. It also makes me feel better knowing he isn't a good speller even to this day. I recommend this book to anyone who h...more
streuguut
Normalerweise verschlinge ich immer die Bücher von Marquez, aber ausgerechnet bei seiner Autobiographie musste ich mich immer wieder dazu durchringen weiter zu lesen.

Die Zauber, die ich beim Lesen seiner Bücher immer verspürt habe, war nach der anfänglichen Erzählung über seinen Kurzbesuch in Aracataca schnell verflogen und konnte auch nie mehr wieder erlangt werden. In seinen endlosen Erzählungen über seine Zeit als junger Schüler oder später als junger Schriftsteller schwelgt er, meiner Meinu...more
DonQuijote
He tardado 3 años en leer el libro. Claro que no fue una lectura continua, hice un parón de más de un año, qué digo, de dos, pero de todas formas, eso dice bastante de lo que me enganchó el libro, es decir, poco.

El estilo de Gabriel García Márquez se mantiene a lo largo de todo el libro, que es lo que más me gustó, pero su maraña de lugares, personajes e idas y venidas en el tiempo hacen imposible seguir el hilo argumental. Además, al final solo ha contado sus 30 primeros años de vida y sobre to...more
Brian
This is the first in the trilogy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's autobiography. I found it entertaining and informative about the early life of the Nobel Prize winners life in Columbia. I do recommend, for those of you without a working knowledge of Columbian geography, that an Atlas is helpful in understanding his movements as a teen. One thing I really like about Marquez, and which now I realize is a Latin American cultural trait, is the matter of fact treatment and weaving of the supernatural int...more
Rachel
This book took me forever to read first because of finals and then because I lost my copy while in the Dominican Republic. However, I really enjoyed reading it for its insight into García Márquez's formative years and the context it provides for Love in the Time of Cholera, One Hundred Years of Solitude, etc.

A lot of people (hipsters) are really down on magical realism at the moment, and I agree that a lot of the genre's authors are overrated (e.g. Allende), but there can be no knocking García...more
Zeinab Mustafa
Jun 09, 2011 Zeinab Mustafa rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition
Recommended to Zeinab by: Tasneem Fehead
بوحٌ على بوح.. هي سيرة ماركيز الذاتية.

ماركيز المفتون بسحر الحكاية، يقرر أخيراً أن يخلع عنه معطف الروائي ويحكي لنا عن ماركيز الإنسان، في مضمومة قوية من براعة الحكي -ما لم يقدر على الخلاص منه أبداً- ممزوجة بفن الاستقطاب، انفلتت في تداعيها الحر مدفوعة بصراحة وصدق صادمين، ولغة أدبية اعترافية النزعة.

حقيقةً ما زلت لا أصدق كيف تقدر شخصية عامة وذات ثقل -أياً كانت- على كتابة سيرة ذاتية كاشفة وربما فاضحة أيضاً كهذه.. لا يعمدون فيها للترشيح، ولا لمقص رقابة على عالمهم السفلي.

قرأت من قبل "ماذا علمتني الحياة"...more
Lana Rigsby
I finally started this book last Sunday, on a cold, wet, dreary afternoon perfect for curling up with the magnificent memoir by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A fat book at 533 pages, it's the first volume of a planned trilogy. And as you'd expect, Marquez moves slowly, interweaving personal mythology with an epic political history of Columbia in a narrative that cuts back and forth through time rather than pursuing a conventional linear chronology. The effect is disorienting at first bu...more
Andrés Velázquez
En la sinopsis se define a este libro como una visita guiada a la obra de García Márquez, lo cual me parece muy acertado. En muchos pasajes de este libro uno puede encontrar el génesis de cada uno de los trabajos que conforman la vida profesional de este autor. Aparte de ello es una autobiografía que muestra una visión más integra del autor antes de entrar de lleno a la literatura como el gran autor que es.

Debo decir que al mismo tiempo esta obra es un verdadero desmadre al no mantener un hilo n...more
Hayfa Qahtani
” الحياة ليست ما يعيشه أحدنا ، وإنما هي ما يذكره، وكيف يتذكره ليرويه”



لن أتحدث في السطور القادمة عن الكاتب الذي سحرني خلال عام وبضعة أشهر، إنما عن الإنسان الذي قرأت سيرة حياته التي لا تختلف مقدار ذرّه عن حياة أي إنسان آخر!

إلا أن غابيتو قررّ أن يكتبها بروحه التي لا يمكن أن تسبر غورها إلا من خلال الابحار في رواياته وقصصه القصيرة.

نصيحة قبل تتبع أحرفي هنا، هناك الكثير من الأحداث التي نقلها غابرييل غارسيا ماركيز عن حياته الحقيقية لرواياته ، ربما تكون اقتباساتي هنا بمثابة (إفساد) لما تخفيه كتب لم تقرأو...more
Aunt
May 23, 2008 Aunt rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: All fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I first read Garcia Marquez in college while workig on my Master's in Spanish-language literature. Reading this first volume of his autobiography was delightful! The characters that populate his novels and stories are alive and real in this tome, and his non-linear/non-chronological style adds what I found to be interesting twists to the autobiography. Though it's a work of non-fiction, you feel as if you're in a novel as the events of his life are as fantastic as the events of his works. Aspiri...more
Jil
Sep 11, 2008 Jil rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: writers
Recommended to Jil by: Silvia
Shelves: spanish
This five stars is kind of for the book, but mostly for me - I got this book in January of 2008 from the girlfriend of my host father in Argentina after she found out that I had read Love in the Time of Cholera and 100 Years of Solitude in Spanish. I got maybe 50 pages in, determined to read it aloud to myself to understand the flow of Spanish better, then abandoned it because English books were easier and could be read in the presence of other people.

This summer, I returned to it, guilty about...more
Maria Pallozzi
Non mi ha entusiasmato quanto mi aspettassi, tuttavia è indiscutibile la capacità narrativa dell'autore e il suo senso dell'umorismo adorabile, nonché la magia che riesce sempre a creare, quell'illusione di catapultarti in un mondo per sempre perduto, un'oasi nella Colombia fantastica dove anche i gringos vengono cullati dai ricordi di quella terra.
La parte che più ho apprezzato è la descrizione dei personaggi della sua famiglia, ho ricordato con piacere l'emozione provata nel leggere Cent'anni...more
Mohammed Sa'adallah
عُشْتُ لأرى، Living to Tell the Tale، يقول جابرييل جارسيا مركيز! بعد رواية “مئة عام من العزلة” التي نال جائزة نوبل عنها، وها هو بأسلوب لا يقل روعة وسحر عن أسلوبه المعتاد يواصل إثارة الشغب الساكن في نفوس تقرأة، فهو كما يقول عاش ليروي! ونحن نقول عاش لنقرأ ما يراه روايه في خُطى ما يكتب.
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مشاعر ماركيز وأحاسيسه المرهفة 2 15 Dec 15, 2012 07:11am  
Trilogy ? 4 24 Jun 13, 2012 04:28pm  
Living to Tell the Tale (Paperback)
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Living to Tell the Tale (Hardcover)

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Gabriel José de la Concordia Garcí­a Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. Garcí­a Márquez, familiarly known as "Gabo" in his native country, is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. In 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He started as a journalist, and has written many acclaimed non-fiction works and short st...more
More about Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez...
One Hundred Years of Solitude Love in the Time of Cholera Chronicle of a Death Foretold Memories of My Melancholy Whores Of Love and Other Demons

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“من عرفوني وأنا في الرّابعة من عمري، يقولون إنني كنت شاحباً ومستغرقاً في التأمل، وإنني لم أكن أتكلم إلا لأروي هذيانات. ولكن حكاياتي، في معظمها، كانت أحداثاً بسيطة من الحياة اليومية، أجعلها أنا أكثر جاذبية بتفاصيل متخيلة، لكي يصغي إليّ الكبار. وكانت أفضل مصادر إلهامي هي الأحاديث التي يتبادلها الكبار أمامي لأنهم يظنون أنني لا أفهمها. أو التي يشفّرونها عمداً، كيلا أفهمها. لكن الأمر كان خلاف ذلك؛ فقد كنت امتصها مثل إسفنجة، وأفككها إلى أجزاء، وأقلبها لكي أخفي الأصل؛ وعندما أرويها للأشخاص أنفسهم الذين رووها تتملكهم الحيرة للتوافق الغريب بين ما أقوله، وما يفكرون فيه.” 21 people liked it
“I discovered the miracle that all things that sound are music, including the dishes and silverware in the dishwasher, as long as they fulfill the illusion of showing us where life is heading.” 10 people liked it
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