Two extraordinary storytellers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (affectionately known as Gabo) and Mario Vargas Llosa the novelist and the literary critic star in one of the most fervent friendships that the world of literature has ever seen. These same friends, ten years later, end their friendship with an infamous punch to the face. But before things fell apart under the guidance of these two men who would later win Nobel Prizes, a group of writers, the best of Latin America, met, celebrated, lived and wrote together sharing exciting adventures and shared experiences the stuff that literary genius is made of.

Few contemporary writers are more revered by Americans than Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel prize-winning author of Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude. And few political leaders are more reviled than Fidel Castro. Yet these two seemingly disparate men are close friends. What could possibly unite these two men in friendship? In Fidel and Gabo, M rquez scholars ngel Esteban and St phanie Panichelli examine this strange, intimate, and incredibly controversial friendship between the beloved author and Cuban dictator, exposing facets of their personalities never before revealed to the greater public. For years, M rquez, long fascinated with power, solicited and flattered Castro in hopes of a personal audience, for he viewed Castro 's Cuba as the model on which Latin American would one day build its own brand of socialism. Upon their first meeting, Castro quickly came to regard M rquez as a genius and still calls him his closest friend and confidant. To this day, M rquez still gives Castro first look at all his manuscripts and craves his approval. Fidel and Gabo is a vivid and in-depth look at two of the most influential men of the modern era, their worlds, and the effect this friendship has had on their life and works.