Daily Bookshot: Gabriel
November 2, 2009 by Rob
Filed under Daily BookShot
It’s not often I look forward to diving into a 688 page paperback, but then today’s subject is hardly a run-of-the-mill paperback. This, for those who don’t know already, is of course Gerald Martin’s seminal biography on Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez. The hardback edition was published by Bloomsbury in October 2008, and the eagerly awaited paperback edition (pictured here) was published last month.
You may have noticed in the last paragraph, that I referred to Martin’s biography on Márquez as being ’seminal’. I did this purposely and for good reason. This is the only biography on the Columbian author that exists so far, which makes it seminal on its own. But more than that, despite having reservations with Martin initially, Márquez has proclaimed Martin as being his ‘official biographer’. So an endorsement from the great man himself? That’s surely going to set this biography as a lasting testament to ‘Gabo’, and a work by which all future biographies on the Columbian wordsmith will be measured.
Another reason I’m excited about this biography is because Martin tells us in his foreword that it was 17 years in the making. This is instant attraction for me. No biographer is going to spend that long on a biography without having injected comprehensive detail and meticulous accuracy into the work. A bit of an unqualified comment to make without reading the biography first perhaps, but coupling Martin’s 17 year labour of love, with Márquez’s endorsement of Martin, makes this one hell of a reading prospect.
Anyway, expect to see me commenting on Martin’s Márquez biography as I slip in the odd chapter or two, as and when I can.
Bloombury | October 2009 | £16.99 | PAPERBACK | 688 PP | ISBN: 9780747596141
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Rob, a self-confessed bibliophile, is without any hope of rehabilitation. He gets unnaturally excited over anything book-shaped, and if book sniffing were a crime then he would have been locked up years ago (which wouldn't bother him in the slightest provided his cell were lined with books)
Cool pic! Seriously. And I love your idea of the “book shot”. You take them, right?
[Reply]
Rob Reply:
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:59 am
Thank you for the kind words Lisa. Yep whether good or bad, all my own work.
Warmest
Rob
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