Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a novelist, short story writer, journalist, critic, and
screenwriter, has had international recognition for many years. He is included
among the group of South American writers who rose to prominence during the
1960s, a time often referred to as the “boom” of Latin American Literature.
In his short stories and novels, Leaf Storm, One Hundred Years of Solitude,
Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and The Autumn of the Patriarch, he utilizes his
background, and personal experiences, which makes his novels so popular. Garcia
Marquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia, on March 6, 1928. He lived with his
grandparents for the first eight years of his life. The storytelling of his
grandmother and the myths and superstitions of the townspeople all played major
roles in shaping his imagination. He enrolled in the University of Bogota in
1947 to study law, but when it was shut down in 1948 he transferred to the
University of Cartagna, working as a journalist for the newspaper El Universal.
Devoting himself to journalism, he ended his law studies in 1950 and 2 moved to
Barranquilla to work for the daily paper El Heraldo. He then began to write
short stories that were published in regional periodicals, and soon after became
acquainted with the works of authors such as Franz Kafa, William Faulker,
Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce. Living with his grandparents had a big effect
on his later years and in his novels, especially the house in which they lived.
Marquez remembers his grandparents’ house as a dwelling place of the dead,
rather than the living. In that house there was an empty room where his aunt
Petra and uncle Lazarus had died. He said “ My grandparents would sit me down,
at six in the evening, in a corner, and say to me ‘Don’t move from here,
because, if you do, Aunt Petra, who is in her room will come or . . . ` I always
stayed sitting” ( Minta 34 ) . In the same manner, his first novel, Leaf
Storm, featured a little boy as a character that through the whole novel sat in
a small chair. 3 Chronicle of a Death Foretold, deals with an episode from
Garcia Marquez past, and deals with the murder of a friend in Sucre in 1958 (
Gabriel 23) . It tells about the “codes that men impose on women, and women on
themselves; the curious notions of honor that can dominate an isolated
community; the irresistible impulse toward violence; and the psychology of mass
complicity” ( Marquez 1) . Garcia Marquez style of writing is what some call
“magical” ( Gabriel 3 19 ). His works are usually attributed to his
imaginative blending of history, politics, social realism, and fantasy. He often
makes use of techniques of magic realism in his works with descriptive events
and reality which, he implies, “ define human existence” ( Gabriel 3 1 ).
One example of that is in One Hundred Years of Solitude a baby is born with a
“pigs tail” ( Gabriel 1 69 ). His usual enthusiastic critical response is
mostly because of this. In conclusion, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, makes a big
impression in peoples thoughts. He is a novelist who uses personal trials and
tribulations and mixes them with fantasy to make everyone of his books more
interesting. For these reasons the critics praise him and he remains popular.

Bibliography
“Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale
Research, 1998. “Gabriel Garcia Marquez .” The Groiler Library of
International Biographies. New York: The Philip Leif Group Inc, 1996. “Gabriel
Garcia Marquez.” Discovering Authors Modules. Detroit: Gale Research, 1996.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Chronicle of A Death Foretold. New York: Alfred A.
Knoff, 1982. Minta, Stephen. Garcia Marquez: Writer of Columbia. New York:
Harper and Row, 1987.