Memory Mail

Overview of the book: When Gabriel Garcia Marquez read Emma Reyes's letters, in which she narrated the strangest and most beautiful childhood and adolescence stories of one of her close friends, the Nobel laureate was captivated by the Colombian artist's pen to the extent that he contacted her expressing his deep admiration. She, in turn, was angry with their mutual friend, believing that he had broken the implied privacy agreement between them when Garcia Marquez revealed her letters, and she refused to correspond for more than twenty years. However, she resumed the correspondence in the late last century, and agreed to publish her letters after much resistance, on the condition that the proceeds from this book be allocated to an orphanage. "Memoirs' Mail" was first published in 2012, and was met with overwhelming acclaim, chosen as the book of the year in Colombia, and translated into many languages. The very existence of this work and everything related to it is extraordinary and astonishing, especially its author, the skilled storyteller who did not learn to read and write until a late stage of her life, and the visual artist who remained confined in a convent of nuns until nearly eighteen years old. Perhaps the innocence with which Emma depicts her childhood scenes is what makes her letters so exceptional, as she still sees through the eyes of the little girl she once was, with all her wonder and spontaneity.