Angela Bussone - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Biography

Colombian-born author Gabriel Garca Mrquez , or Gabo as he is known, is the preeminent figure among Latin American writers and an internationally recognized leader in contemporary literature. Garca Mrquez , a writer, journalist, political activist and screenwriter, is considered the father of magical realism , spawning a new genre of literature forty five years ago with a solitary composition.

To date, the Nobel Prize -winning author has written more than twenty works , including novels, novellas, short stories, and nonfiction, which have resulted in numerous adaptations as plays and films. One Hundred Years of Solitude alone has sold more than thirty million copies throughout the world, with translations of his works appearing in thirty five languages.

Among his most well-known works are One Hundred Years of Solitude , Love in the Time of Cholera , which was made into a movie in 2007 starring Javier Bardem; Of Love and Other Demons , Leaf Storm , No One Writes to the Colonel , Chronicle of a Death Foretold , The Autumn of the Patriarch, Memories of My Melancholy Whores , and Living to Tell the Tale .

Garca Mrquez is credited with playing no less a role in the literary landscape than placing Latin American fiction on the global shelf, according to an article in the Boston Globe . This is in part due to his breakthrough novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude , described as the most extensively read novel of the Spanish language and sparking the magical realism literary style. Chilean poet Pablo Neruda likened One Hundred Years of Solitude to the illustrious Don Quixote , saying it was perhaps the greatest revelation in the Spanish language since the Don Quixote of Cervantes . It was the creation of One Hundred Years of Solitude that resulted in Garca Mrquez receiving the moniker father of magical realism .

Although Garca Mrquez has permeated the literary world and has been just as equally embraced, his career has not been without controversy. Last September of 2011, The Guardian reported copies of Garca Mrquezs book, News of a Kidnapping , had sold out in Iran because of comments by opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was reported in The Guardian as saying the books account of kidnappings in Colombia as an accurate reflection of his life under house arrest . News of a Kidnapping gives the account of the kidnappings of prominent Colombians in the 1990s under the direction of Pablo Escobar.

This is not the first time Garca Mrquezs works have been the subject of controversy in Iran. Citing a bureaucratic error, Iran rescinded publication of Garca Mrquezs Memories of My Melancholy Whores and refused to permit reprints of the novel in the country in 2007.

Garca Mrquez has not been shy about his political leanings, and is said to have held as a hero the Latin American revolutionary, Simon Bolivar. Some of these political stances and related relationships have caused issues for the author, including a refusal by the United States for a period to grant the author a visa. His friendship with Fidel Castro has also been a source of contention, and because of this Garca Mrquez was under surveillance by a Mexican intelligence agency while he lived in Mexico, as reported in the Mexican newspaper El Universal .

His political involvements were said to have been a reason he fled Colombia for Mexico in the 1970s.

He was also heavily involved in brokering peace between Colombian government officials and the United States in efforts to thwart guerrillas in his home country in the 1990s, in addition to his role in securing the release of kidnapped individuals and curtailing civil wars in Latin America. In 1992, President Bill Clinton , who is said to hold One Hundred Years of Solitude among his favorite works , enabled Garca Mrquez to travel to the United States by lifting the ban that had previously been placed against him.

It has not been solely political figures that have precipitated a tempest in Garca Mrquezs personal life. Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa wrote what Garca Mrquez once said was the best book about him to date , a biography titled Historia de un Deicidio . But a public dispute in Mexico City on Valentines Day in 1976 created a chasm between the two writers that had previously been undocumented. In 2007, evidence of the physical confrontation between the two surfaced in La Jornada , a Mexican newspaper, on Garca Mrquezs eightieth birthday. La Jornada published a photo revealing Garca Mrquez with a black eye, which had never been published prior and had been hanging on the home wall of the photographers friend for thirty one years.

The photo of Garca Mrquez was captured two days after Mario Vargas Llosa gave the author a black eye. The fight is said to have been the result of accusations of betrayal, jealousy and adultery , and was apparently the last time the two spoke until Vargas Llosa made amends in 2007 with his essay on the fortieth anniversary of One Hundred Years of Solitude . As told in a New York Times article , the fight erupted in a movie theater in Mexico City after Vargas Llosa approached Garca Mrquez, who apparently attempted to embrace Vargas Llosa, but was met with a punch instead. The nexus of the dispute has been attributed to being about a woman, the wife of Vargas Llosa.

The author is reported to have said he was famous even at birth, except that he was the only person to be aware of it. Garca Mrquez was born in the town of Aracataca, Colombia , in 1927, which sits off the Caribbean coast in South America. Aracataca was once the hub for the United Fruit Company (imparting its Banana Zone label) , but its departure in the 1930s is said to have begun the towns deterioration .

In his memoir, Living to Tell the Tale , Garca Mrquez recalls his return to Aracataca in his twenties since leaving as a boy at age eight . Garca Mrquez was asked by his mother to go back to the town of his childhood to help sell his grandfathers house. This trip to Aracataca would become a turning point in his career, and is attributed as being the model for the fictional town of Macondo in his novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude .

It was not uncommon for . Even the authors Facebook page has conflicting dates on its biographical information. Judging by the Spanish-language newspapers and most recent jacket copies, however, 1927 seems to be the accepted year of the authors birth.

Garca Mrquez has described his life as being hard and magical in his formative years, and public and mysterious in his later years. His parents, Gabriel Eligio Garca and Luisa Santiaga Mrquez Iguarn , reportedly had eleven children (although other sources say the number was sixteen ). Garca Mrquez was the first child for the couple. His father was a medical student , but worked as a telegraph operator in Aracataca and d eparted the town with his mother when the author was an infant.

Garca Mrquez was left behind with his maternal grandparents, and spent the first eight years of his life in Aracataca. It was during these early years that his grandparents countless fantastical tales are said to have permeated the Aracataca milieu and left indelible marks on his imagination. His grandfather , a former colonel, has been a source of inspiration for Garca Mrquez.

An account published by The New Yorker in 1999 shares that Garca Mrquezs grandfather disapproved of his father, who was considered an outsider , and his romantic intentions with his mother. Yet, his fathers tenacious pursuit won out, inspiring his work,