Gabriel García Márquez

The life of Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez was one of the most well known authors in the genre of magic realism. In addition to One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, he wrote such masterpieces such as The Autumn of the Patriarch and No One Writes to the Colonel. through his spectacular use of language, he was able to create environments in which reality and fantasy overlapped. 

 

Gabriel García Márquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia on March 6, 1928. He grew up with his grandparents, and came to love the many stories that his grandmother told to pass the time. From her he learned to love language, as it could be manipulated to create incredible characters and environments. 

 

He is most known for his fantastic contribution to the genre of magic realism, as he created environments whose description caused uncertainty about what was reality. 

 

Even though it does not seem tied to the real work, his work often reflects real life conflict, such as La Violencia, a period of civil unrest throughout Colombia in the late 1940s. In 1967, Márquez published One Hundred Years of Solitude, and received international acclaim through pizes like the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, the Italian Premio Chianciano, the American Neustadt Prize, and the Venezuelan Romulo Gallegos Prize.

 

In the 1970s, Márquez moved to Barcelona with his family, and was known for his political activism in Latin America, and most notably an association with Fidel Castro and the Cuban Communist government. 

Throughout the rest of his life, he aligned himself with the marginalized whom he thought deserved dignity.  

 

In addition, Márquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, a reward well deserved for all his contributions to literature. 

 

Unfortunately, however, Márquez contracted lymphatic cancer in 1999 and was dehabilitated by the disease. Although he survived, the cancer treatments caused the acceleration of his mental decline and he suffered from dementia for many years. He was unable to continue writing and died in Mexico City on April 17, 2014. He was truly a genius in the genre of magic realism and will be forever missed. RIP.