Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Gabriel García Márquez

 

Gabriel García Márquez

  • Gabriel García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist.  
  • García Márquez, affectionately known as Gabo throughout Latin America, is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. 

Early life

  • Gabriel José de la Concordia "Gabo" García Márquez was born March 6, 1927.
  • When his parents fell in love, their relationship met with resistance from Luisa Santiaga Marquez's father, the Colonel. 
  • Gabriel Eligio García was not the man the Colonel had envisioned winning the heart of his daughter: he (Gabriel Eligio) was a Conservative, and had the reputation of being a womanizer.
  • He was brought up by his grandparents who had an important influence on his education.

Success

  • In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha; they have two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.
  •  He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in his leaving law school for a career in journalism.
  •  He started as a journalist, and has written many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best-known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985).
  • From early on, he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics.
  • Gabriel García Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. 
  • His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magical realism, which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations. 
  • Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo, and most of them express the theme of solitude.

Illness

  • Gabriel García Márquez was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1999. 
  • His impeding death was was incorrectly announced by Peruvian daily newspaper in 2000. 
  • Later newspapers published Garcia Marquez’s alleged farewell poem, “La Marioneta” (“the puppet”). 
  • However shortly afterwards García Márquez denied being the author of the poem. 
  • In fact, it was was the work of a Mexican ventriloquist. The poem is republished below. I think it may constitute a very good piece of material to teach English.

Works

Novels

  • In Evil Hour 1962
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude 1967
  • The Autumn of the Patriarch 1975
  • Love in the Time of Cholera 1985
  • The General in His Labyrinth 1989
  • Of Love and Other Demons 1994

Novellas

  • Leaf Storm 1955
  • No One Writes to the Colonel published 1961 in Spanish (written in 1956-1957)
  • Chronicle of a Death Foretold 1981
  • Memories of My Melancholy Whores 2004

Short Story Collections

  • Innocent Eréndira, and Other Stories 1978
  • Collected Stories 1984
  • Strange Pilgrims 1993

Non Fiction

  • The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor 1970
  • The Solitude of Latin America 1982
  • The Fragrance of Guava 1982, with Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza
  • Clandestine in Chile 1986
  • News of a Kidnapping 1996
  • A Country for Children 1998
  • Living to Tell the Tale 2002
Related Links about Gabriel García Márquez

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