"Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2019"--Title page verso

The presidential barber -- Topic for a topical piece -- An understandable mistake -- The lonely hearts killer -- Death is an unpunctual lady -- The strange idolatry of la Sierpe -- A man arrives in the rain -- The house of the Buendías (notes for a novel) -- Literaturism -- The precursors -- The postman rings a thousand times -- The Aracataca tiger -- H.H. goes on vacation (fragment) -- The scandal of the century -- The disappearing women of Paris--are they in Caracas? -- "I visited Hungary" (fragment) -- The world's most famous year -- Only twelve hours to save him -- June 6, 1958: Caracas with no water -- Misadventures of a writer of books -- I can't think of any title -- The sandinista heist : chronicle of the assault on "the hog house" -- The Cubans face the blockade -- The specter of the Nobel Prize -- Telepathy without strings -- The new oldest profession -- Yes, nostalgia is the same as it ever was -- Horror story for New Year's Eve -- Magic Caribbean -- Poetry, in children's reach -- The river of life -- Maria of my heart -- Like souls in purgatory -- Something else on literature and reality -- My personal Hemingway -- Ghosts of the road -- Bogotá 1947 -- Tales of the road -- My other me -- Poor good translators -- Sleeping beauty on the airplane -- Writer wanted -- Obregón or the boundless vocation -- Literature without pain -- From Paris, with love -- Return to Mexico -- Okay, we'll talk about literature -- That news board -- Return to the seed -- How do you write a novel?