The greatest Colombian of all time

The above words were used by the President of Colombia to describe Gabo, one of the world's most popular writers. He died on April 17, 2014 in Mexico City. Born on March 06, 1927 he was eighty seven. President Barack Obama said, 'The world has lost one of its great visionary writers.' The French President called him 'a literary giant' who was 'one of the most influential South American intellectuals of our time.' Salman Rushdie wrote after his death, 'He was the greatest of us all'. Gabo's death received 'extraordinary worldwide attention' and readers everywhere 'felt genuine sorrow at his passing'.  
Who is Gabo, by the way? The world's most loved writer was formally called Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His greatest work, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', has sold thirty million copies since its publication in 1967. He received the Nobel Prize in 1982. Known as the best exponent of magic realism, he was the world's most influential writer of fiction. His influence the world over can be compared to the influence of Charles Baudelaire and T.S. Eliot as poets before him. 'Should be required reading for the entire human race', wrote The New York Times on his best book. The Sunday Telegraph called him 'An exquisite writer, wise, compassionate and extremely funny.' Critics found 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' the most magical book and claimed that he has influenced the world.
The Caribbean cricketers were the world's best from 1960 to 1990. No wonder the twentieth century's most influential writer was born in Aracataca, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. If the Russians have dominated world fiction before, the twentieth century belonged to Latin America. Several powerful world class writers practised magic realism and some of them were awarded the Nobel Prize. Magic realism is a literary style which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations.          
As a small child Marquez lived with his maternal grandparents near a banana finca called Macondo. He studied law, first at the National University of Colombia in Bogota, where he wrote his first story, and then in Cartagena, where he also worked for a newspaper. In 1950 he moved to Barranquilla, where his new circle of friends exposed him to world literature. He admired Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. He gave up his law studies and wrote 'Leaf Storm', but Losada, the publishing house, advised him to go for 'another line of work'. For the next few years he worked for a few newspapers and a press agency in Latin America, Europe (Rome, Paris and Barcelona) and New York City. 'No One Writes to the Colonel' was written during this period. In 1961 he went to Mexico to work on film scripts, one of which was written with Carlos Fuentes. The idea for his great novel 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' came to him on a car trip from
Mexico City to Acapulco in 1965. He shut himself up for eighteen months and wrote it. His wife managed her family with borrowed money. After its publication in 1967 from Buenos Aires, it became an instant bestseller and won literary prizes the world over. Thus he created his fictional world of Macondo with interesting characters and 'magical reality'. Some of his works are set in this fictional village inspired by his birthplace Aracataca. Most of them explore the theme of solitude. Even his Nobel Prize speech was titled 'The Solitude of Latin America'. Life here is as dramatic and as full of variety as the history of Colombia and Latin America. Characters here survive civil wars, banana barons and natural calamities. Personal, family and historic: all events are made eternal by Marquez in his more than a dozen books of fiction, the names of which are famous in countries from Argentina to Japan and from Canada to Australia.         
His grandfather's stories shaped Garcia Marquez's political and ideological views. His literary technique was influenced by the Colonel too. His writing career 'initially took shape in conscious opposition to the Colombian literary status quo.' Marquez's anti-imperialist and socialist views are in 'direct opposition to the global status quo dominated by the United States'. His grandmother played an equally important role in his upbringing. He was inspired by her story-telling, 'treating the extraordinary as something perfectly natural.' Her deadpan style influenced her grandson's best novel some thirty years later.
Garcia Marquez befriended Fidel Castro and found him a very cultured and learned man. They met on several occasions and talked literature passionately. President Bill Clinton also admired him personally, declared 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' as his favourite novel and talked literature with him for hours together.  
Gabriel Garcia Marquez will be remembered for hundreds of years in the future. Classics like 'The Autumn of The Patriarch' (1975), 'Innocent Erendira and Other Stories' (1972), 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold' (1981), 'Love in the Time of Cholera' (1985), 'The General in His Labyrinth' (1989), 'Of Love and Other Demons' (1994), along with the books mentioned above, will ensure that. Jhumpa Lahiri informs her readers that she has read his 'Collected Stories' so many times that her copy no longer has a cover.       

Junaidul Haque studied English Literature at the University of Dhaka. He writes fiction and essays in both Bangla and English. He has published eight books of fiction and columns. Pathak Samabesh published his Nirbachita Galpa in 2009