Google Doodle: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel Prize-winning Colombian novelist and pioneer of ‘Magic Realism’ in fiction, was honoured on his 91st birth anniversary by Google through its doodle today. Marquez, one of the most significant writers of 20th century won the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s most celebrated works include One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Love In The Time Of Cholera and Chronicle Of A Death Foretold. Marquez won universal critical acclaim for his original work and his enthralling use of ‘magic realism’ in which magical elements are used in everyday situations.

Marquez, known as Gabo throughout Latin America, had his roots firmly anchored in Colombian and Latin American culture. His birthplace of Aracataco was immortalised in his work as Macondo.

The doodle highlights the magical city of Macondo which was brought to life by the author is his famous book "A Hundred Years of Solitude". The book eventually became a bestseller, with more than 30 million copies sold worldwide. Some of his other acclaimed books are "The Autumn of the Patriarch", "Love in the Time of Cholera", and "Chronicles of a Death Foretold". His last work "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" was published in 2004.

Born in the year 1927 in Aracataca, Colombia, he has penned over 25 books, transporting readers into a world of magical realism where they find themselves in the lush, humid tropics - moldering into solitude or being slowly consumed by the throes of passion.

Marquez's keen sense of political activism and courage also allowed him to author a number of non-fictional works that eloquently document the times that he lived in, "News of a Kidnapping" being among the most famous of these. During the Cuban Revolution, Marquez also shared a close friendship with Fidel Castro.

Marquez was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1999 and died of pneumonia in April 2014 in Mexico City at the age of 87.

(With inputs from IANS)