Few people know that in the 1950s, García Márquez - a young journalist who was not very well known at the time - appeared in communist Czechoslovakia... He was originally invited to the Soviet Union for the World Youth Festival, but he managed this "journey to the East" expand to include a visit to East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. These travel essays, in which Márquez appears as a very precise and original observer, are being published in Czech for the first time.