Articles

This week, the world lost a literary great --- Gabriel García Márquez. The Latin American, multi-prize-winning author was 87 years old, and his legacy will carry on through his extremely elegant command of the written word.

Márquez, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, wrote several long-form classics, as well as a handful of short stories and some poetry, all of which remain as popular in the current day as when they were first released. He is perhaps best known for ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE (1967), the definitive book on magical realism, a genre he created, that blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. His imaginative contouring of characters, relationships, time and space creates a highly engaging and page-turning experience for the reader --- an unparalleled experience that continues to inspire and delight writers and readers alike. The themes of family and the sense of community in juxtaposition with solitude and violence make for a compelling and mind-bending tale.

Another Márquez fan favorite, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA (1985), maintains its critically acclaimed status as an Oprah's Book Club pick from 2007. This saga of the emotional and physical distresses of heartbreak and disease is a "sentimental story about the enduring power of true love." His unique ability to simultaneously glamorize and downplay human emotion and interaction is just another exquisite display of his true talent.

Márquez's identity and accomplishment as a staple figure in the literary world extend beyond his personal work. He was also an icon of the Latin American "Boom" movement alongside his confidantes, Julio Cortázar (author of HOPSCOTCH), Carlos Fuentes (author of THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ) and Mario Vargas Llosa (recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010). The "Boom" movement came about as a "modernist departure from the European literary canon," in an effort to prove to the world that great writing existed outside of New York and Paris. The spearheads of the "Boom" movement and others that followed introduced a rejection of conventional narrative form --- an indirect expression of the political turmoil plaguing Latin America. The movement evolved and flourished with the help of determined and smart supporters, like Márquez, who introduced literary-landscape-shifting ideologies. In essence, his insights and work were key in making Latin American literature (and global literature) a thing of the present and the future.

So this week, we celebrate the life, work, spirit, drive, imagination and intellect of a man, a writer, an author, a novelist, a husband and a father, who will continue to amaze and arouse admirers through his extraordinary language.