Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Gabo, was born on March 6, 1928 [though his father said that it it was really 1927] in Aracataca, Magdalena, a town in Northern Colombia. He isIn his early life, he practically had no interest in his law school. He read poetry instead of law. He became like a slacker. Then everything changed when he read Kafka's The Metamorphosis which had a liberating effect on him. He felt free when he wrote.
He began his career as a reporter and editor for regional newspapers. He joined the Baranquilla group which was a group of writers and journalists. The group gave him motivation and inspiration in writing.
His first major work, The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, created public controversy. It told a true story of a shipwreck caused by overweight of contrabands aboard a Colombian vessel. In real life, it said that the shipwreck was caused by a storm and glorified the surviving sailor, which wasn't what really happened. He became a persona non grata to the government.
Most of his works took place in "his universe." Characters, events, places repeated and repeated in the stories. They were full of magical realism, which is a combination of ordinary life and fantasy and magic. They also contained actual history.
His most commercially successful novel was One Hundred Years of Solitude which was influenced by how his grandmother told stories, fantastic, supernatural but completely natural, without expression on her face. he had to believe his stories with a brick face. He won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature for One Hundred Years of Solitude.
He was also a political activist. He has always been critical of the political situation in Colombia. He was actually friends with Fidel Castro but he still tackled the shortcomings of the Cuban Revolution and Castro's Regime.
In 1999, he was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer and to this day, he undergoes treatments.
-Shai Bautista
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