He wrote in the so-called "magical realism" style that we often associate with fiction from South America, but he did it very much his own way. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982, the first Colombian and fourth Latin American to win it.
His most famous and most-read book is "One Hundred Years of Solitude," which Madame L read years ago, when she was living in Venezuela. Madame L thought she would next read the book in Spanish. However, when she went to buy a copy of it in Spanish from her local bookstore. the proprietor, who was originally from Colombia (like Garcia Marquez), chuckled and said, "Good luck! I have trouble reading him. His vocabulary is so unique, so original, so large."
From USA Today's report of his death:
In 1988, Garcia Marquez told The New York Times that his style varied: "In every book I try to make a different path…One doesn't choose the style. You can investigate and try to discover what the best style would be for a theme. But the style is determined by the subject, by the mood of the times."
But he also said, "In Mexico surrealism runs through the streets."
Another great one who will be missed!
1 comment:
I read "Love in the Time of Cholera" in Spanish and it was wonderful! Yes, I had to have a dictionary next to me, but it makes me feel better to know that a native speaker also would have struggled with it. I read "100 Years of Solitude" in English and loved it. Or maybe I read one in English and the other one in Spanish; I don't remember. At any rate, he writes beautifully.
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