"Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale." -- Gabriel Garcia Marques Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel Prize-winning magic realist whose beloved novels include One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, is dead at the age of 87. He died at home in Mexico City, around midday today. Garcia Marquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, when Nobel organizers said "his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts." He was considered one of the most popular Spanish-language writers of his generation. Garcia Marquez was born in the Colombian mountain town of Aracataca, which served as the model for his fictional village of Macondo, immortalized in his multi-generational family saga, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Other works included Autumn of the Patriarch, Love in the Time of Cholera, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The General and His Labyrinth, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Living to Tell the Tale and I Didn't Come Here to Make a Speech. He wrote in numerous genres — novels, novellas, short stories, a collection of speeches, essays, screenplays, as well as a memoir. He began as a film critic, journalist, and foreign correspondent long before turning to fiction. His epic One Hundred Years of Solitude was published in 1967, and subsequently translated into more than 30 languages. More than 30 million copies have been sold around the world. At least one of his works - Love in the Time of Cholera - was adapted to film in 2007 and Of Love and Other Demons forms the basis for an opera. “From the time I read One Hundred Years of Solitude more than 40 years ago, I was always amazed by his unique gifts of imagination, clarity of thought, and emotional honesty ... I was honoured to be his friend and to know his great heart and brilliant mind for more than 20 years." -- Former U.S. president Bill Clinton. "He is like the Mandela of literature because of the impact that he has had on readers all over the world,” said Cristobal Pera, editorial director of Penguin Random House in Mexico. "His influence is universal, and that is a very rare thing."
Garcia Marques dismissed criticism about his friendship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. He insisted that their friendship was based on books. "He is a very cultured man," he said about Castro. "When we are together, we talk about literature." The media-shy writer had lived in Mexico City for more than 30 years. Paul Richard Harris is an Axis of Logic editor and columnist, based in Canada. He can be reached at paul@axisoflogic.com. Read the Biography and additional articles by Axis Columnist, Paul Richard Harris © Copyright 2014 by AxisofLogic.com This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article in its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you! |
