In the last few years, García, who is a film director, has been working on transforming his father’s books into movies: he is the executive producer of News of a Kidnapping (which is being produced by Amazon Prime and is currently being filmed in Colombia) and a Netflix-produced version of One Hundred Years of Solitude (which is in the pre-production stage). But the family has always been very careful not to reveal too much about their private life. “We are not public figures,” his mother, who was very protective of their privacy, used to say. In this way, the new book is a small window into the pain his parents suffered when García Márquez –who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 – was at the end of his life. “I know that I couldn’t publish these memories while she was able to read them,” says García. If his parents could read them now, “I would like to think they would be happy and proud, but I’m sure my mother would tell me, ‘what a gossip you are’,” he adds.

Currently reading One Hundred Years of Solitude for the first time.