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Gabriel García Márquez’s Son On His Father’s Final Days And Legacy

Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha outside their home in Mexico City.
Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha outside their home in Mexico City.

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Listen 33:42

“My father complained that one of the things he hated most about death was that it would be the only aspect of his life he would not be able to write about,” writes Rodrigo Garcia, Gabriel García Márquez’s son.

In his new memoir, “A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son’s Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha,” Garcia chronicles the final days of his father’s life during his battle with dementia, with his wife Mercedes by his side.

Everything he lived through, witnessed, and thought was in his books, fictionalized or ciphered. ‘If you can live without writing, don’t write,’ he often said. I am among those who cannot live without writing, so I trust he would be forgiving. Another of his pronouncements that I will take my own grave is this: ‘There is nothing better than something well written.’

We talk with Garcia about his father’s legacy, and the path he forged as a filmmaker in the U.S.

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