Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia 1928)

The famous Colombian novelist known world-wide for his masterfully weaving of the magic realism genre, was born in 1928 in the small town of Aracataca, Colombia. Garcia Marquez was raised by his grandparents, who would often tell him wonderous stories, fables and fairy tales. Garcia Marquez attended law school but dropped out to persue a career in journalism. He was a regular contributor to El Espectador and other newspapers before dedicating himself to full time writing and literature.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a liberal thinker whose left-wing politics angered many conservative politicians and heads of state, including Colombian dictator Laureano Gomez and his successor, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. His job as a reporter for the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, in 1960, and and friendship with Fidel Castro resulted in his being ultimately denied entry to the United States for political reasons. In light of his ideological differences, and the political intolerances of others, he was forced to seek political asylum for much of his adult life in Europe, Venezuela, and Mexico. In the early 1980s he was finally invited back to Colombia, where he mediated between the government and leftist rebels.

It was actually while living in exile in Mexico that Garcia Marquez began to write his crowning achievement and masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, the saga of the Buendia family and its generations in the fictional town of Macondo.

Bibliography: "One Hundred Years of Solitude", "The Autumn of the Patriarch", "Chronicle of a Death Foretold", "The General in His Labyrinth", "News of a Kidnapping"...