Fidel and Gabo. A portrait of the legendary friendship between Fidel Castro and Gabriel García Márquez

Abstract

Few contemporary writers are more revered by Americans than Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel prize-winning author of Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude. And few political leaders are more reviled than Fidel Castro. Yet these two seemingly disparate men are close friends. What could possibly unite these two men in friendship? In Fidel and Gabo, Marquez scholars Angel Esteban and Stephanie Panichelli examine this strange, intimate, and incredibly controversial friendship between the beloved author and Cuban dictator, exposing facets of their personalities never before revealed to the greater public. For years, Marquez, long fascinated with power, solicited and flattered Castro in hopes of a personal audience, for he viewed Castro's Cuba as the model on which Latin American would one day build its own brand of socialism. Upon their first meeting, Castro quickly came to regard Marquez as a genius and still calls him his closest friend and confidant. To this day, Marquez still gives Castro "first look" at all his manuscripts and craves his approval. Fidel and Gabo is a vivid and in-depth look at two of the most influential men of the modern era, their worlds, and the effect this friendship has had on their life and works.