masterwordsmith-unplugged

One of my favourite authors, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, passed away two days ago in Mexico City. I have read and enjoyed most of his books - especially One Hundred Years of Solitude. Here's a tribute by Amy Finnerty taken from FP:

The Great and Magical Gabo by Amy Finnerty

Fame, acclaim, and a notorious friendship with Fidel Castro: The life of writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez was as fantastical and politically charged as his reality-bending novels.

Few contemporary writers and none from Latin America could match the scope of his influence or the radical inventiveness of his imagination. Affectionately called "Gabo," Gabriel Garcia Márquez, the Colombian Nobel laureate, journalist and author, was the most celebrated Latin American cultural export of his era. He died, at 87, on April 17, in his home in Mexico City. 

His glamorous mystique -- the houses and apartments strewn across Europe and the Americas, the glossy magazine profiles, the voluptuousness of his words -- was offset by the author's self-deprecating charm and humble back-story. The chasm between his socialist beliefs and the opulent lifestyle to which he ultimately grew accustomed attracted criticism, to be sure, yet his literary reputation never sagged under the weight of that paradox.

It was the 1967 publication and 1970 translation into English of his most famous novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, that vaulted the author to stardom. In that novel, the head of the allegorical Buendía family interprets the world according to his own perceptions. In a warped chronology of events, Macondo's founding family is regenerated ceaselessly, through revolution, natural disaster, and incestuous coupling. Translated into English by the peerless Gregory Rabassa, One Hundred Years of Solitude has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. It gave exuberant voice to a region of the world that had previously been viewed as lush but inscrutable, best known by many Americans and Europeans for its political instability and violence.  

As in most of his fiction, in One Hundred Years of Solitude, the author said he sought to destroy "the lines that separate what seems real from what seems fantastic."

CLICK HERE for more.