Ozersky is a critic and essayist. In this essay, he discusses García Márquez's literary art, and how it is hidden beneath the surface of his novel.

García Márquez is one of the most famous writers in the world, but not for books like News of a Kidnapping. García Márquez, who received the Nobel Prize in 1983 and whose novels are read in nearly every language, is associated with a surreal style called "magical realism." News of a Kidnapping, on the other hand, seems to be journalism of the starkest kind. Ten people are kidnapped by soldiers of Pablo Escobar's drug cartel. They are prominent people drawn from the very upper crust of Colombian society. One is the daughter of a former President; another is a famous former soap-opera actress with high political family connections; others are...