Introduction to Gabriel García Márquez

Abstract

Abstract The publication in 1967 of his masterpiece Cien años de soledad, followed by the English-language translation in 1970, changed García Márquez’s personal and professional life forever and was arguably the main reason for his winning the 1982 Nobel Prize. Other masterworks would follow, notably The Autumn of the Patriarch, an experimental narrative about an aging Caribbean dictator that is also infused by magical realism while leaving behind the Macondo of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Also passed in review here are his short-story collections, his later novels of romantic love, and the highly praised novellas No One Writes to the Colonel and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. García Márquez’s literary success is placed within the context of the Cuban Revolution, the Latin American Boom, and the growing recognition received by previous Latin American authors (Cortázar, Fuentes, Vargas Llosa). In ensuing articles, García Márquez is examined via a broad array of perspectives, several of them unavoidable: biography, magical realism, and alchemy; local roots and world influence (especially in the Global South and Asia, as well as Spain); and issues of ethnicity, gender, myth, ecology, musical genres, left-wing politics, and anti-imperialism. Readings of individual works conclude our survey. Throughout these thirty-two essays, virtually all of García Márquez’s mature works—long and short, early and late, fictional, nonfictional, and even filmic—are expertly and subtly teased out for the benefit of his many devoted readers worldwide.