García Márquez always thought of himself as a journalist first and foremost and this brilliant collection goes a long way towards justifying that belief. Or, at least, it puts his journalism on the same level as his fiction, which is quite some level.

The articles and columns in The Scandal of the Century demonstrate that his forthright, lightly ironical voice just seemed to be there, right from the start. . . . He's among those rare great fiction writers whose ancillary work is almost always worth finding. . . . He had a way of connecting the souls in all his writing, fiction and nonfiction, to the melancholy static of the universe.

In his journalism, García Márquez's prose was as precise, euphonious and inventive as it was in his fiction. Only a magician of a translator like Anne McLean could get it right. For anyone who has been enthralled by One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Scandal of the Century is an essential book.

Quite unlike anything else being published ... One of the most unique voices in the field ... His imagery is breathtaking

(Ligotti uses) restrained, lyrical prose and subtly disturbing images that Poe himself might well have admired

Orwell saw … that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power

[Orwell fought] the evils of the world and the weakness of his body to the day of his death, always striving, striving to tell the truth about what he saw and what he felt