Gabriel Jose de la Concordia Garcia Marquez, also known as Gabo (born March 6, 1927 in Aracataca, Magdalena) is a Colombian novelist, journalist, editor, publisher, political activist, and recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. His second novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), is the best-selling of all books originally written in the Spanish language (36 million copies sold as of July 2007). Marquez has lived mostly in Mexico and Europe and currently spends much of his time in Mexico City. Widely credited with introducing the global public to magical realism, he has secured both significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success. Many people hold that Garcia Marquez ranks alongside his co-writers of the Latin American Boom, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortazar as one of the world's greatest 20th-century authors.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the father of television and film director Rodrigo Garcia.
Early days
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in the Colombian town of Aracataca, Magdalena. His parents left him to be reared by his grandparents. After starting his early education at a boarding school in Barranquilla, Garcia Marquez at the age of 12 was awarded a scholarship to a secondary school for gifted students called the Liceo Nacional in Zipaquira which he attended until he was 18. He then moved 30 miles south to Bogota and studied law and journalism at the National University of Colombia.
Journalism
Garcia Marquez began his career as a reporter and editor for regional newspapers — El Heraldo in Barranquilla and El Universal in Cartagena. It was during this time that he became an active member of the informal group of writers and journalists known as the Barranquilla Group, an association that provided great motivation and inspiration for his literary career. Garcia Marquez then worked as a foreign correspondent in Caracas, Rome, Paris, Barcelona, India, and New York City.
Literature
Garcia Marquez's first major work was The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (Relato de un naufrago), 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 foreign correspondence, as Garcia Marquez 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.
Several of his works have been classified as both fiction and non-fiction, notably Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Cronica de una muerte anunciada) (1981), which tells the tale of a revenge killing recorded in the newspapers, and Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del colera) (1985), which is loosely based on the story of his parents' courtship. Many of his works, including those two, take place in the "Garcia Marquez universe," in which characters, places, and events reappear from book to book. The works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez often cross genres and most integrate at least a few elements of magical realism. Furthermore, many of his novels and short stories integrate actual history as well as complete fabrication, making his genres sometimes difficult to pin down.
His most commercially successful novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien anos de soledad) (1967; English translation by Gregory Rabassa 1970), has sold more than 36 million copies worldwide. It chronicles several generations of the Buendia family who live in a fictional South American village called Macondo. Garcia Marquez won the Romulo Gallegos Prize in 1972 for One Hundred Years of Solitude. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, with his short stories and novels cited as the basis for the award.
In 2002, he published the memoir Vivir para contarla, the first of a projected three-volume autobiography. The book was a bestseller in the Spanish-speaking world. Edith Grossman's English translation, Living to Tell the Tale, was published in November 2003 and has become another bestseller. On September 10, 2004, the Bogota daily El Tiempo announced a new novel, Memoria de mis putas tristes (Memories of My Melancholy Whores), a love story that follows the romance of a 90-year old man and a drugged, pubescent concubine, was published the following October with a first print run of one million copies.
Political views
Garcia Marquez is noted for his friendship with Cuban president Fidel Castro and has previously expressed sympathy for some Latin American revolutionary groups, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. He has also been critical of the political situation in Colombia.
In different circumstances, Garcia Marquez has occasionally acted as a low profile facilitator in several negotiations between the Colombian government and the guerrillas, including the former 19th of April Movement and the current FARC and ELN organizations. Gabriel Garcia Marquez y la paz colombiana at El Colombiano Garcia Marquez media por la paz at BBC Mundo
On January 26, 2006, Garcia Marquez joined other internationally renowned figures such as Mario Benedetti, Ernesto Sabato, Thiago de Mello, Eduardo Galeano, Carlos Monsivais, Pablo Armando Fernandez, Jorge Enrique Adoum, Pablo Milanes, Luis Rafael Sanchez, Mayra Montero and Ana Lydia Vega, in supporting sovereignty for Puerto Rico and joining the Latin American and Caribbean Congress for the Independence of Puerto Rico, which approved a resolution favoring the island-nation's right to assert its independence, as ratified unanimously by political parties hailing from 22 countries in November 2006; Garcia Marquez's push for the recognition of Puerto Rico's independence was obtained at the behest of the Puerto Rican Independence Party. His pledge for support to the Puerto Rican Independence Movement was part of a wider effort that emerged from the Latin American and Caribbean Congress in Solidarity with Puerto Rico’s Independence.
Illness
In 1999, Garcia Marquez was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. This event incited Garcia Marquez to start writing his memoirs. In 2000, his impending death was incorrectly reported by Peruvian daily newspaper La Republica. The next day other newspapers republished his farewell poem. Later the poem was determined to be the work of a Mexican ventriloquist.Garcia Marquez Farewell Letter at Museum of Hoaxes
Film
A number of films have been made of Garcia Marquez's work (such as Ruy Guerra's Erendira), but few have been critical or popular successes. Most recently, British director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) has begun production in Cartagena, Colombia, of a film based on Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, the screenplay of which has been written by Ronald Harwood ("The Pianist"). The film's cast includes Spaniard Javier Bardem and Italian Giovanna Mezzogiorno, as well as Colombian actress Catalina Sandino. Colombian-born U.S. actor John Leguizamo and Benjamin Bratt, of Peruvian descent, will also star.
Bibliography
Novels
- In Evil Hour 1962
- One Hundred Years of Solitude 1967
- The Autumn of the Patriarch 1975
- Chronicle of a Death Foretold 1981
- Love in the Time of Cholera 1985
- The General in His Labyrinth 1989
- Of Love and Other Demons 1994
- Memories of My Melancholy Whores 2004
Short Stories
- The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World (1971)
- Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Miracles (1972)
- The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship (1972)
- Death Constant Beyond Love (1973)
- The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother (1973)
- The Sea of Lost Time (1974)
- Eyes of a Blue Dog (1978)
- The Night of the Curlews (1978)
- Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses (1978)
- The Woman Who Came at Six O'Clock (1978)
- Artificial Roses (1984)
- Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon (1984)
- Big Mama's Funeral (1984)
- Bitterness for Three Sleepwalkers (1984)
- Dialogue with the Mirror (1984)
- Eva is Inside Her Cat (1984)
- Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo (1984)
- Montiel's Widow (1984)
- Nabo: The Black Man Who Made the Angels Wai (1984)
- One Day After Saturday (1984)
- One of These Days (1984)
- The Other Side of Death (1984)
- There Are No Thieves in This Town (1984)
- The Third Resignation (1984)
- Tuesday Siesta (1984)
- A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (1984)
- Bon Voyage, Mr. President (1992)
- The Saint (1992)
- Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane (1992)
- I Sell My Dreams (1992)
- "I Only Came to Use the Phone" (1992)
- Maria dos Prazeres(1992)
- Seventeen Poisoned Englishmen (1992)
- Tramontana (1992)
- Miss Forbes's Summer of Happiness (1992)
- Light is Like Water (1992)
- The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow (1992)
- The Ghosts of August (1993)
- Caribe Magico (1996)
Short Story Collections
- No One Writes to the Colonel 1968
- Leaf Storm 1972
- Innocent Erendira 1978
- Strange Pilgrims 1992
Non-fiction
- The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor 1955
- The Fragrance of Guava 1982
- 1987
- News of a Kidnapping 1996
- A Country for Children 1998
- Living to Tell the Tale 2002
Further Reading
References
Fernandez Leal Augusto, La vida de Maquez
See also
External links
- Nobel hub
- Official Publisher Website
- Garcia Marquez at The Modern Word
Video
Other pages about Colombian novelists
-Alfredo Iriarte -Alvaro Mutis -Andres Caicedo -Enrique Santos Molano -Fernando Vallejo -Gabriel Garcia Marquez -Gustavo Bolivar -Henry H. Carter -James Canon -Jorge Isaacs -Jose Maria Vargas Vila -Josefa Acevedo de Gomez -Laura Restrepo -Max Vergara Poeti -Porfirio Barba-Jacob -Zacarias Reyan
Other pages about Colombian short story writers
-Andres Caicedo -Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Gabriel_Garcia_Marquez
