GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in his leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on, he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha; they had two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

García Márquez started as a journalist, and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magic realism, which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo (the town mainly inspired by his birthplace Aracataca), and most of them explore the theme of solitude.

COMMENTARY BY JULIO ORTEGA

García Márquez: ‘He is alive in our reading’

I was discussing with my class García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude when the news came to us. Gabo and Carlos Fuentes were most beloved authors at Spanish-speaking Brown. One student gave me the news in a terse email: "Gabo is back to Macondo.” She is right: He is alive in our reading.

Laughing like old friends
Former President Ruth Simmons met García Márquez in 2007, when she delivered an address at the University of Guadalajara.I always encourage students in my course on Gabriel García Márquez to write a well-crafted research paper, but some students produce other amazing creative work — short movies, photography, paitings, and once even some “magic realist” cooking in Macondo!