Five years after the master storyteller passed away, the Heirs of Gabriel García Márquez have allowed this past year the publication of fifty of his top journalistic pieces for the first time in English. The collection is titled 'The Scandal of the Century and Other Writings' and has been published by the New York based publishers Alfred A. Knopf.

Márquez regarded journalism as 'the best job in the world' and identified himself more as a journalist than a writer. He collaborated with various Spanish newspapers like El Espectador (Bogota), Mometo (Caracas), and El Pais (Madrid) and the articles finding space in this anthology were mainly published in these newspapers between 1950 and 1984.

Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer prize winning veteran American journalist, tells the truth about the book: "The good news, hardly surprising, is that this collection is a master class on how to write  for a newspaper: lush, vivid columns full of information, whimsy, humour, skepticism, and rumination, just what one would expect from García Márquez. The bad news is that he checked out so early and that his genius is not around to tell us what we need to know about Donald Trump".

True that Gabo isn't here to capture the life and times of contemporary world's most maverick and unpredictable head of the state, yet he's vividly recounted stories of many South American despots and dictators.

The fall of the repressive Pérez Jiménez regime in Venezuela was reported by him, as were the dictatorships of Somoza in Nicaragua, Juan Domingo Petón in Argentina, and Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. When Salvador Allende, the socialist President of Chile, was overthrown by Augusto Pinochet in 1972, the writer declared not to publish another book until the regime had fallen. Márquez was cock-a-hoop after Fidel Castro had overthrown Batista and travelled down to Cuba to memorably write about his first Cuban experience in 'I Can't Think of Any Title'.

All fifty pieces of the anthology are classics of García Márquez's trademark writing style where real-life drama are reconstructed in detail and narrated with a suspense that would remind readers of both Alfred Hitchcock and Arthur Conan Doyle. Gabo's easygoing humour is also present in abundance.

In 'Topic for a Topical Piece' the writer makes it clear that it's possible to write an entertaining article about nothing in particular. The anthology begins with Gabo's hilarious piece on 'The Presidential Barber'. In 'Death Is an Unpunctual Lady' he writes with characteristic humour about a man who dreamt of the exact timing of his death, waited for Death at the 'appointed time', and it was Death, rather than the man, who failed to arrive for the appointment !

García Márquez's serialized story from Rome, published in El Espectador in September 1955, about the mysterious death of a young Italian woman Wilma Montesi finds place in the book and also bestows its mock-tabloid title, 'The Scandal of the Century'. The piece, full of Hitchcockian suspense, is as good as it can get.

The book is an eclectic mix of articles about life, its absurdities, and beyond. Only the genius of a Márquez could possibly cover the quirks of an entire international year (1957) in 'The World's Most Famous Year', describing most evocatively about the drama of PM Anthony Eden's resignation in London to the death of actor Humphrey Bogart, the possible breakup of the young Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, the diplomacy of Nikita Khrushchev, the successful launch of Sputnik, as also the birth of a baby girl to Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida. Phew! What a Year ??

Not at all. In fact, Wow! What A Year !!

Each of the pieces in the book is worth its weight in gold. The anthology will prove to be a subtle savour for all the Márquez Mad readers, for sure. The way it has turned out for me, for instance.

The reviewer is a Joint Secretary rank Officer in the Government of Jharkhand. Singh is a bibliophile having a voracious appetite for reading.