"He told me directly that the novel had to be destroyed," the author's younger son Gonzalo García Barcha told The New York Times. His eldest son, Rodrigo García, said his dad "lost the ability ...

His sons Rodrigo and Gonzalo García Barcha explain in their preface that the Colombian Nobel Laureate, who died in 2014, said of it: “This book doesn’t work. It must be destroyed.” ...