Gabriel García Márquez : a life

Prologue: From origins obscure (1800-1899)

Part I: Home: Colombia: 1899-1955. Of colonels and lost causes (1899-1927) ; The house at Aracataca (1927-1928) ; Holding his grandfather's hand (1929-1937) ; Schooldays: Barranquilla, Sucre, Zipaquirá (1938-1946) ; The university student and the "Bogotazo" (1947-1948) ; Back to the Costa: an apprentice journalist and a bohemian group (1950-1053) ; Back to Bogotá: the ace reporter (1954-1955)

Part II: Abroad: Europe and Latin America: 1955-1967. The discovery of Europe: Rome (1955) ; Hungry in Paris: "La Bohème" (1956-1957) ; Beyond the Iron Curtain: Eastern Europe during the Cold War (1957) ; Venezuela and Columbia: the birth of Big Mama (1958-1959) ; The Cuban Revolution and the USA (1959-1961) ; Escape to Mexico (1961-1964) ; Melquíades the magician: "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1965-1966) ; Fame at last (1966-1967)

Part III: Man of the world: celebrity and politics: 1967-2005. Barcelona and the Latin American boom: between literature and politics (1967-1970) ; The solitary author slowly writes: "The Autumn of the Patriarch" and the wider world (1971-1975) ; Chile and Cuba: García Márquez opts for the revolution (1973-1979) ; Return to literature: "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" and the Nobel Prize (1980-1982) ; The frenzy of renown and the fragrance of Guava: "Love in the Time of Cholera" (1982-1985) ; Against official history: García Márquez's Bolívar ("The General in His Labyrinth") (1986-1989) ; Back to Macondo? News of a historic catastrophe (1990-1996) ; García Márquez at seventy and beyond: memoirs and melancholy whores (1996-2005)

Epilogue: Immortality-the new Cervantes (2006-2007)