García Márquez: Story of a Deicide

Unpublished in Brazil, García Márquez: History of a Deicide is at the same time an analysis of the work of the Colombian author and a declaration of love for the work of his Latin American literary companion.

Published in the early 1970s and long out of print, this essay demonstrates the Peruvian Nobel laureate's admiration for García Márquez and his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude . Originally the thesis that earned Vargas Llosa his doctorate from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1971, García Márquez: History of a Deicide analyzes in depth the work of the Colombian author, his companion during the boom of Latin American literature in the 20th century.

"A writer does not choose his themes; his themes choose him. García Márquez did not decide, through a free movement of conscience, to write fiction based on his memories of Aracataca. Quite the opposite happened: his experiences in Aracataca chose him as a writer. A person does not choose his demons: certain things happen to him, some hurt him so much that they drive him, madly, to deny reality and want to replace it. These things, which are at the origin of his vocation, will also be his stimulus, his sources, the material from which this vocation will work. It is not, of course, in the case of García Márquez or any other writer, of reducing the starting point and nourishment of the vocation to a single experience: others, over time, complement, correct, and replace the initial experience. But in the case of García Márquez, the nature of his work allows us to affirm that this experience, without denying the importance of others, constitutes the main impulse for his creative task."

"The best essay on García Márquez. A literary achievement. [...] A tremendously ambitious and profound study that rigorously unravels and scrutinizes the demons, the events, the sometimes implausible stories that shaped the Colombian writer's prose until One Hundred Years of Solitude ." - Javier García Recio, La Opinion de Málaga

"An indirect portrait of a brilliant writer who had the generosity to read his contemporary as if he were a classic. A rarity." - J. Rodríguez Marcos, Babelia

"You could say that Vargas Llosa knows more about García Márquez than García Márquez himself. It makes one think of a museum built to house a work of art, and ultimately, the architecture of the building is as valuable, if not more so, than the work it houses." - Clarín