Talk closed before the oral history appeared. I published it in The Paris Review.

In 2010, by chance, I saw García Márquez at the inauguration of a museum in Mexico City. He didn’t look so well. There were thousands of people there: the president of Mexico; the richest man in Mexico. And I saw how thousands of people, instead of going up to them, all went to García Márquez. With love. My heart skipped a beat, and I was curious: Who was this who had turned into our Latin John Lennon? So I think the book was born that day. I realized that I needed to give it more of a structure, so I went out and did a second round of interviews.

What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it?

I was really surprised that he was as superstitious as he was — that he didn’t attend funerals, even of his friends. Some people maybe begrudged the fact that he didn’t go, but he was really superstitious and panicked by it. These are little things, but they’re very telling.

Image Silvana Paternostro Credit... Marcela García

The one big thing that really struck me was his discipline. Because I know where we come from, where pranksterism and Caribbean laissez-faire are the rule of the day. This young boy who grew up with really very little in his favor turned out to be the man who put Latin American literature on the map. And he wanted to; it wasn’t a fluke. He told himself that he would write a book that would be as important as “Don Quixote,” and he did.

In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write?

There are people that have spent most of their lives as Gabo experts. I don’t think I’m a Gabo expert. I had a curiosity in understanding the man before and the man he became later. But along the way, I became the repository of all these incredible stories, and I felt it was almost my obligation to share them. Especially in this English version, I did something I didn’t do in the Spanish: I included things that would make readers understand Colombia. It turned into a book that explains our music, the violence, the idiosyncrasies of the region. When I was growing up, it was red alert: Don’t go. Now that Colombia has become a travel destination, the book, while it’s not a travel guide, is a companion to travel to Colombia with.