Gabriel Garcia MáRquez

Gabriel Garcia Márquez (1927-2014) was a major literary voice in the second half of the 20th century, and widely considered to be the greatest writer to come out of Colombia. He began as a journalist, branching out into short stories and novels. His style has been called "magic realism," in which ordinary people and events accept magical elements as a natural and commonplace part of life. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

Raised by his grandparents in the town of Aracataca, Gabriel Garcia Márquez began his journalism career while still in law school. His humorous columns brought him into a groups of writers known as the Barranquilla Group. His work eventually took him to Venezuela, and later Mexico City. His first novel, Leaf Storm, was published in 1955, after taking seven years to find a publisher. His breakthrough novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, appeared in 1967 and cemented his international reputation as a major literary figure.

Gabriel Garcia Márquez's fame led him into contact with a number of notable Latin American figures, including Fidel Castro, which led the United States to impose a ban on his entry in to the US, a ban lifted by President Clinton, who cited One Hundred Years of Solitude as one of his favorite novels. His other notable works include Autumn of the Patriarch, Love in the Time of Cholera, and News of a Kidnapping.