During the 1980s, the government of Colombia signed a treaty with the United States allowing for the extradition of Colombian citizens. This caused a great deal of distress among the kingpins of the Medellín drug cartel. Why? Traffickers like Pablo Escobar had spent the decade exporting billions of dollars' worth of cocaine. They weren't likely to be arrested at home, but if extradited and tried in America, they would spend the rest of their lives in prison. Escobar and his colleagues tried to a cut a deal with the government. Then Escobar decided that a little extralegal pressure--i.e., terrorism--could do no harm. In short order he had 10 prominent Colombians kidnapped; most were journalists, and all had professional or personal ties to the pro-extradition movement. Ultimately two of the hostages were shot. The remaining eight were released in a trickle, as the drug traffickers began to break ranks and surrender. So ended at least one episode in what Gabriel García Márquez calls "the biblical holocaust that has been consuming Colombia for more than twenty years." García Márquez was originally invited to write about the kidnapping by Maruja Pachon, who spent six months in captivity. As he began to write, however, he realized that her story was inseparable from that of the other nine victims. The result is a meticulous, sobering, and suspenseful book. It is, of course, a work of reportage, which puts a lid on the author's penchant for magic realism. But in the hands of a writer like García Márquez, truth makes fiction look paltry indeed.


From Library Journal
Garcia Marquez, Latin America's Nobel prize-winning novelist, turns his hand for the first time to nonfiction to explain, through one individual's experience, the widespread kidnapping in Colombia. Although focusing on Maruja Pachon's six months in captivity and her prominent husband's efforts to obtain her release, the book is really about the 1990 abduction of ten individuals by drug traffickers hoping to prevent their extradition to the United States. As he does so memorably in his fiction, the author captures the political intricacies and strange, deep involvement of drug dealers in Colombian life, turning what as easily could have been an imagined story into a fascinating exploration of contemporary culture, politics, and drug lords. Highly recommended.?Roderic A. Camp, Latin American Ctr., Tulane Univ., New OrleansCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Robert Stone
Mr. García Márquez is a former journalist and News of a Kidnapping resembles newspaper journalism of the better sort, with a quick eye for the illuminating detail and a capacity for assembling fact. It will interest those who follow the details of the drug problem more than it will appeal to the literary following of Mr. García Márquez. The translation from the Spanish by Edith Grossman is in keeping with the tone of the narration.


From Booklist
In 1990, 10 people were abducted in Colombia by the Extraditables, drug traffickers, in a desperate attempt to avoid extradition to the U.S. It was a loud nada that came in the wake of the U.S. sentence given one of their compatriots, Carlos Lehder--life plus 130 years. The abductions were but a part of Colombia's struggles with the drug cartels, which were responsible for the murder of 25 journalists between September 1983 and January 1991 as well as the assassination of four presidential candidates before the 1990 campaign. Garcia Marquez is concerned with the kidnapping, with relating a singular experience of Colombia that threatened its social and political framework. And he tracks the story like a detective, weaving in the voices of all the players, ferreting out the nuances in their relationships, and cunningly revealing a country torn asunder by the quest for drug traffickers, or rather the mother of all drug traffickers, Pablo Escobar. The kidnap victims were journalists or relatives of powerful politicians; Escobar's aim was to force the government into an agreement whereby the Extraditables would release their prisoners and surrender in exchange for imprisonment in Colombia, in an area of their choice. Garcia Marquez is dealing with reality, and at times his tone is that of the journalist reporting a newsworthy event; but his material involves intrigue, victims in hideaways, captors in hoods, incandescent meetings between negotiators from all sides, and the tyranny of fate. A complex situation but just the sort of human snakepit that Garcia Marquez finds a home in. Bonnie Smothers


From Kirkus Reviews
In the same straightforward tone with which he relates the fabulous events of his fiction, Colombia's premier novelist presents the chillingly extraordinary events surrounding the 1992 abduction of ten prominent people by the Medell¡n drug cartel. For anyone who has doubts about where the real war on drugs is taking place, this is a vivid testimony to what Garc¡a M rquez calls ``the biblical holocaust that has been consuming Colombia for more than twenty years.'' It is a tale featuring real-life heroes, almost comically absurd events, endless terror, and a satisfyingly dramatic ending. Controlling the events is a man we never meet until the very end--the all-powerful and cunningly elusive Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medell¡n cartel. Fearing extradition to the US and death at the hands of his competitors more than he fears the Colombian government, he takes the hostages (primarily journalists) as pawns as he negotiates his surrender to the security of a specially prepared Colombian prison. Among the extraordinary men negotiating for the hostages' freedom are Alberto Villamizar, a politician who was himself once an assassination target of Escobar's and whose wife, Maruja, and sister, Beatriz, are both hostages; and the elderly Father Garc¡a Herreros, known for his daily television homilies and celebrity-studded fundraisers. But at the core of the narrative are the daily terrors and tribulations of the hostages, scattered in groups of two and three in different hiding places under the constant watch of Escobar's young, nihilistic soldiers. Newspaper editor Pacho Santos is chained to his bed at night. Maruja, Beatriz, and the doomed Marina Montoya must share a tiny, dark, airless room with four guards, their trips to the bathroom strictly regulated, their only distraction the television, through which Maruja's daughter, with her own TV show, sends coded messages of support and hope. Garc¡a M rquez's consummate rendering of this hostage-taking looms as the symbol of an entire country held hostage to invisible yet violently ever-present drug lords. (First printing of 100,000) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Consumed these past twenty years by a "biblical holocaust," Colombia has endured leftist insurgencies, right-wing death squads, currency collapses, cholera epidemics, and, most recently and corrosively, drug trafficking. Returning to his days as a reporter for El Espectador, Gabriel Garcia Marquez chronicles, with consummate skill, the period in late 1990 when Colombian security forces mounted a nationwide manhunt for Pablo Escobar, the ruthless and elusive head of the Medelln cartel. Ten men and women were abducted by Escobar's henchmen and used as bargaining chips against extradition to the United States. From the testimonies and diaries of the survivors, Garcia Marquez reconstructs their bizarre ordeal with cinematic intensity, breathtaking language, and rigor. We are drawn into a world that, like some phantasmagorical setting in a great Garcia Marquez novel, we can scarcely believe exists--but that continually shocks us with its cold, hard reality.


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This astonishing book by the Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez chronicles the 1990 kidnappings of ten Colombian men and women-all journalists but one-by the Medellin drug boss Pablo Escobar. The carefully orchestrated abductions were Escobar's attempt to extort from the government its assurance that he, and other narcotics traffickers, would not be extradited to the United States if they were to surrender.

FROM THE CRITICS

Wall Street Journal

Brilliant...Deeply affecting...a story rich in characters who are both heroic and contradictory.

Michiko Kakutani

Possesses all the drama and emotional resonance of Garcia Marquez's most powerful ficiton. -- New York Times

San Francisco Chronicle

One of the best books of the year.

Rob Spillman

Before he earned his international reputation as the master of magic realism and before he was crowned a Nobel Laureate, Gabriel García Márquez was a foreign correspondent for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador. After his good friend Maruja Pachon de Villamizar was kidnapped by drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in 1990, García Márquez decided to return to his roots and write a straight book of journalism about the eight-month drama that captivated Colombia.

At the time, Escobar and his associates were on the verge of surrendering, but refused to turn themselves in unless the government guaranteed that they would not be extradited to the United States. To increase their bargaining position "The Extraditables" abducted 10 prominent journalists, several of whom were related to government officials, including the wife and a daughter of two former presidents. Maruja was the head of the Colombian agency for film promotion, but more importantly to Escobar, she was the wife of Alberto Villamizar, a prominent politician and advisor to President Cesar Gaviria.

García Márquez's narrative bounces back and forth between the cramped cells of the prisoners and the worried families as they negotiate with Escobar. Each night the television was filled with scenes of friends and family of the victims sending personal messages to the captives. The victims gathered around the TV with their captors and sometimes wagered on which celebrity would appear to beg for their release. This surreal drama would seem like perfect raw material for García Márquez's fantastical talent, yet News of a Kidnapping is surprisingly flat and unsuspenseful. In Colombia, the details of the negotiations and the day-to-day survival of the prisoners played well, but in translation the recounting of this strange incident reads like a dated, overlong magazine article. It lacks suspense because García Márquez reveals in the introduction which two of the hostages were killed, which were freed and how and why Escobar surrendered. With all the drama removed, the only motivation to read on is for the few surreal, emotional tidbits sprinkled throughout. Those looking for a grand parable or compelling historical account will be disappointed by what feels like a blown opportunity. -- Salon

Publishers Weekly