Kayla writes:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The author of my independent reading book One Hundred Years of Solitude is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In 1982 Gabriel Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Priz e for literature and he received his first glimpse of international fame from his well-written classic One Hundred Years of Solitude. He is known as “Gabo” to many of his readers and many people consider him to be one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Garcia Marquez has written over fifteen works of literature and uses magical realism to convey his emotional and unpredictable stories.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia on March 6, 1928. He was born during the end of the banana boom when over one hundred strikers were shot. His parents were poor and having a hard time so his grandparents raised him. Colonel Nicolas Ricardo Marquez, his grandfather, and Tranquilina Iquaran Cotes, his grandmother, were very important influences to the way Gabriel grew up and they also influenced his novels. His grandfather was an interesting man who helped found the village Aracataca, told excellent stories, and taught Gabriel many lessons that he would later put into his stories. His grandmother and her many sisters that lived in the hou se were superstitious and no matter how strange and unrealistic the stories were, she always made it sound like they were the exact truth. Growing up Gabriel was not close to his parents. His mother was spirited and his father was not very well liked by the community or his grandparents so they went to live in Riohacha.
When Gabriel Garcia Marquez was eight years old he moved in with his parents because his grandfather had died and his grandmother’s blindness was increasing. He was sent to a boarding school and was a shy boy who liked to write poems and draw cartoons. When he was twelve he received a scholarship to a school for gifted students. During his time in school he developed a love of literature and after graduating he attended the Universidad Nacional in Bogota as a law student. He met his future wife Mercedes Barcha Pardo during this time and they got married fourteen years later. Garcia Marquez did not like his studies and started slacking in his classes. He sta rted reading and writing more than ever and stopped his studies as a law student. Finally in January 1965 he discovered his tone for his novel. He locked himself in his room for eighteen months writing and smoking. His famous novel was published in June 1967 and at the end of the week 8000 copies had been sold out. Soon after he became the famous writer he is now and his novels are translated internationally.


Sources:

[ http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_biography.html ]http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_biography.html