Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born March 6th, 1927, Aracataca, Colombia. He has eleven younger siblings and grew up with his maternal grandparents Doña Tranquilina Iguarán and Colonel Nicolás Ricardo Márquez Mejía. He was a roman catholic. His parents were almost strangers to him, and his grandparents influenced the early years of his life. He claimed that his love of storytelling came from his grandfather, who used to tell him tales about the war. However, his grandfather died when he was eight years old. He was married to Mercedes Barcha Pardo in 1958 and had two sons Rodrigo Garcia Barcha 1959 and Gonzalo Garcia Barcha 1962.

In 1940, he moved to Barranquilla to start high school and finished high school by 1946. In 1947, Marquez entered law school at the National University of Bogota. Which is when he started reading Kafka and publishing short stories. Marques wrote his first novel Lead Storm 1955 while still in college. His fiction work introduced readers to magical realism, which combines vivid fantasy with more conventional storytelling. However, due to some political riots within the country, the national university shut down and forced Marques to go elsewhere. He then went to the University of Cartagena and went onto becoming a journalist, to support himself.

One of his most famous books, ‘Love in the time of cholera’ was published. He drew inspirations from his real life from the love story of his own parents. Some of his other famous works were ‘The general in his labyrinth’ – 1989, ‘Of love and other demons’ – 1994, ‘News of a kidnapping’ – 1996, ‘Living to tell the tale’ – 2002 and, ’Memories of my melancholy whore’ - 2004

Marques won a Nobel prize for literature December 8th, 1982 in Sweden for his novels and short stories. Which is a combination of fantasy and realism, he tried to bring imagination and conflict within the world together. He was one of the best-known Latin America writers and was the first Colombian to win a Nobel prize for literature.

1999, Marquees was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. After a successful round of treatment, the disease went into remission. But after his brush with death, which influenced him to write his memoirs. However, Gabriel Garcia Marquez died April 17th, 2014 in Mexico City, Mexico at the age of 87.