SOURCE: Saunders, Kate. “Pain and Rage.” New Statesman 126, no. 4345 (1 August 1997): 46-7.

In the following review, Saunders examines García Márquez's portrayal of true-life details in News of a Kidnapping, arguing that the work transcends both reportage and fiction.

Between September 1983 and January 1991, 26 Colombian journalists were murdered by the drug cartels who were crucifying that wretched country. One woman, Maruja Pachon, suggested to Gabriel García Márquez that he write a book about her kidnapping by the “shadow power”. Márquez soon realised that Pachon's experience was inextricably bound to nine other abductions at the same time. He expanded the narrative to include the kidnappings of Diana Turbay and her film crew, and the newspaperman Pacho Santos.

“Their pain, their patience and their rage,” he says, “gave me the courage to persist in this autumnal task, the saddest and most difficult of my life.”

In the hands...