Contemplates the misfortunes of old age, and celebrates the joys of being in love. This work tells of an unnamed second-rate reporter who on the eve of his ninetieth birthday decides to give himself 'a night of mad love with a virgin adolescent'.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was twenty-three, emerging as a young man and experimenting as a writer, when his mother asked him to come with her, back to the village of Aracataca, back to his grandparents' house and the memories of his Colombian childhood. This memoir describes the atmosphere and influences that shaped his imagination.