Gabriel Jose García Márquez: 1928—: Author, Journalist Biography - A Childhood Steeped In Myth, Success As A Journalist, Wrote Critically Acclaimed Novel, Won Nobel Prize
world
Gabriel Jose García Márquez: 1928—: Author, journalist.
One of the most influential novelists of the twentieth century, Gabriel García Márquez was a key figure in the Latin American literary renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s. His novel One Hundred Years of Solitude was read throughout the world, selling millions of copies and introducing enthusiastic readers across the globe to the genre of "magical realism." A prolific journalist as well as a novelist and short story writer, García Márquez has reported from several world capitals and remained active through the 1990s as publisher of the Colombian news magazine Cambio.
Additional Topics
García Márquez was born on March 6, 1928, in Aracataca, Colombia, a small town on the Caribbean coast to which his mother's family had moved after her father, Colonel Nicolas Marquez Mejfa, had killed a man in a duel. The oldest child of 11 siblings, García Márquez grew up in Aracataca with his maternal grandparents, who nurtured the budding writer's imagi…
During his two years in Barranquilla, García Márquez worked for El heraldo, the local paper, writing a regular column that included short stories, fragments, and essays about current issues. He then moved on to a job as correspondent for the Bogota paper El Espectador, writing film criticism and investigative reports. In the mid-1950s García Márquez moved to Europe, an …
Though García Márquez continued a steady production of novellas and short stories during these years, he did not achieve prominence as a writer of fiction until the publication in 1967 of his landmark novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Based on the author's childhood memories of Aracataca, the novel recounts the founding of the fictional town of Macondo by Jose Arcadio Buen…
In 1982 García Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. The Swedish Academy, in bestowing the prize, cited not only the author's narrative gifts but also his demonstrated commitment to social justice. Indeed, the problems of poverty and oppression were the theme of the laureate's acceptance speech. Citing figures that documented thousands of violent deaths and…
García Márquez decided to use his Nobel Prize money to start a newspaper. Yet that venture never materialized, because the author was not satisfied that the independent editorial voice he sought would be respected. Sixteen years later, however, he realized his dream to go back to journalism when he bought the Colombian newsmagazine Cambio in 1999. "Journalism is the only trade…
Citing this material
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments