I feel like an American from whatever country, but I have never renounced the nostalgia of my homeland: Aracataca, to which I returned one day and discovered that between the reality and the nostalgia was the primary material for my work. -- Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez (1928- ) Nobel-prize winning author was born in Aracataca in Colombia. He studied law and journalism at the National University of Colombia in Bogota, then went on to work as a journalist for the newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Caracas, Rome, Paris, Barcelona and New York City.
He is the author of several novels and short stories including Eyes of a Blue Dog, Leaf Storm, No one Writes to the Colonel, In Evil Hour, Big Mama's Funeral, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Love in the Time of Cholera, The General in His Labyrinth, Strange Pilgrims, Of Love and Other Demons, Memories of My Melancholy Whores.
Many of his stories are a combination of fact and fiction. Many of his characters, places, and events reappear from book to book. The works of Gabriel García Márquez often cross genres and most integrate at least a few elements of magical realism.
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (Relato de un náufrago), which he wrote as a newspaper series in 1955. The book told the true story of a shipwreck by exposing the fact that the existence of contraband aboard a Colombian Navy vessel had contributed to the tragedy due to overweight. This resulted in public controversy, as it discredited the official account of the events, which had blamed a storm for the shipwreck and glorified the surviving sailor. This led to the beginning of his career as a foreign correspondence, as Gabriel García Márquez became a sort of persona non grata to the government of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. The series was later published in 1970 and taken by many to have been written as a novel.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Crónica de una muerte anunciada) (1981), tells the tale of a revenge killing recorded in the newspapers, and Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del cólera) (1985), is loosely based on the story of his parents' courtship.
His most commercially successful novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude has sold more than 10 million copies. It chronicles several generations of the Buendía family who live in a fictional South American village called Macondo. Gabriel García Márquez won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in 1972 for One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores was recently published, a decade after the publication of his last novel.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
Gabriel García Márquez is noted for his friendship with Cuban president Fidel Castro
He currently lives in Mexico City.
I have registered Love in the Time of Cholera as a BookCrossing. [see BCID 5448398]
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