Postcolonial Author: "Gabriel García Márquez"

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez, 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). Márquez 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 García Márquez ranks alongside his co-writers of the Latin American Boom, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortázar as one of the world's greatest 20th-century authors.

Gabriel García Márquez is the father of television and film director Rodrigo Garcia.

García Márquez's first major work was The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (Relato de un náufrago), 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 García Márquez 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 (Crónica 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 cólera) (1985), which is loosely based on the story of his parents' courtship. Many of his works, including those two, take place in the "García Márquez 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 años de soledad) (1967; English translation by Gregory Rabassa 1970), has sold more than 36 million copies worldwide. It chronicles several generations of the Buendía family who live in a fictional South American village called Macondo. García Márquez won the Rómulo 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.[1]

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 Bogotá 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.

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

* A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (1968)
* 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)
* 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 Mágico (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
* Clandestine in Chile 1987
* News of a Kidnapping 1996
* A Country for Children 1998
* Living to Tell the Tale 2002

Further reading

* Bhalla, Alok (1987). Garcia Marquez and Latin America.
* Bell, Michael (1993). Gabriel García Márquez: Solitude and Solidarity.
* Bloom, Harold (1989). Gabriel García Márquez (Modern Critical Views).
* Bloom, Harold (1999). Gabriel García Márquez (Modern Critical Views).
* Bloom, Harold (1999). Gabriel García Márquez (Modern Critical Views).
* Bloom, Harold (2007). Gabriel García Márquez (Modern Critical Views).
* Bloom, Harold (2006). Gabriel García Márquez (Bloom's BioCritiques).
* Bloom, Harold (2006). One Hundred Years of Solitude (Modern Critical Interpretations).
* Bloom, Harold (2003). One Hundred Years of Solitude (Modern Critical Interpretations).
* Bloom, Harold (2005). Love in the time of cholera (Modern Critical Interpretations).
* Darraj, Susan (2006). Gabriel García Márquez(The great Hispanic heritage).
* Fahy, Thomas (2003). Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the time of cholera : a reader's guide.
* Fiddian, Robin W. (1995). García Márquez.
* Fuentes, Carlos (1987). Gabriel García Márquez and the Invention of America.
* Janes, Regina (1981). Gabriel García Márquez: Revolutions in Wonderland.
* McGuirk, Bernard (1987). Gabriel García Márquez: New Readings.
* McMurray, George R. (1977). Gabriel García Márquez.
* McMurray, George R. (1987). Critical essays on Gabriel García Márquez.
* McMurray, George R. (1987). Gabriel García Márquez: Life, Work, and Criticism.
* McNerney, Kathleen (1989). Understanding Gabriel García Márquez.
* Mellen, Joan (2000). Gabriel Garcia Márquez.
* Miller, Yvette E. (1985). Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
* Oberhelman, Harley D. (1991). Gabriel García Márquez: A Study of the Short Fiction.
* Ortega, Julio (1988). Gabriel García Márquez and the Powers of Fiction.
* Oyarzún, Kemy (1984). Essays on Gabriel García Márquez.
* Penuel, Arnold M. (1994). Intertextuality in García Márquez.
* Pelayo, Rubén (2001). Gabriel García Márquez: A Critical Companion.
* Shaw, Bradley A. (1986). Critical Perspectives on Gabriel García Márquez.
* Vergara, Isabel (1998). Haunting demons : critical essays on the works of Gabriel García Márquez.
* Villada, Gene (2002). Gabriel García Márquez's One hundred years of solitude : a casebook.
* Williams, Raymond L. (1984). Gabriel García Márquez (Twayne's World Authors Series).