I love Marquez's magic realism and have always wondered where he gets his ideas.

Upon reading the opening chapters of this, his autobiography, I was astounded to find that one of his great stories from Love in the time of Cholera, was almost anectdotal and so close to his real life that I now wonder if the heat of the equator has gotten to me and I am in a fever delirium :)

Suffice it to say, things in mid-20th Century rural Colombia were a darned sight stranger than anything I have encountered in my lifetime.