Gabriel garcía márquezs news of a kidnapping is a powerful retelling of actual events from a turbulent period of colombian history she looked over her shoulder before getting into the car to be sure no one was following herpablo escobar: billionaire drugs baron, ruthless manipulator brutal killer and jefe of the infamous madellín cartel a man whose importance in the international drug trade and renown for his charitable work among the poor brought him influence and power in his home country of colombia, and the unwanted attention of the american courtsterrified of the new colombian presidents determination to extradite him to america, escobar found the best bargaining tools he could find: hostagesin the winter of 1990, ten relatives of colombian politicians, mostly women, were abducted and held hostage as escobar attempted to strong-arm the government into blocking his extradition two died, the rest survived, and from their harrowing stories márquez retells, with vivid clarity, the terror and uncertainty of those dark an volatile monthsreads with an urgency which belongs to the finest fiction i have never read anything which gave a better sense of the way colombia was in worst times daily telegraphcompellingly readable a book with all the panache of márquezs fiction, hitting home rather harder sunday timesa piece of remarkable investigative journalism made all the more brilliant by the authors talent for magical storytelling financial timesas one of the pioneers of magic realism and perhaps the most prominent voice of latin american literature, gabriel garcía márquez has received international recognition for his novels, works of non-fiction and collections of short stories those published in translation by penguin include autumn of the patriarch, bon voyage mr

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