COLOMBIA 6 March 2008 Another big year for Gabriel García Márquez readers. More celebrations?

Anyone arriving in Aracataca, Colombia or elsewhere to celebrate the 80th birthday of the man regarded as the greatest living writer in Spanish and one of the world's greatest novelists, Gabriel García Márquez, is likely to find they have missed the party. Though a host of reputable biographies say García Márquez was born on 6 Mar 1928, Colombia and Spain held big celebrations in March of 2007, the year of the 40th anniversary of his literary masterwork, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and the 25th anniversary of his Nobel Prize for Literature.

In 2007 Spain held a marathon reading of the novel, when over 80 politicians, writers and actors took turns reading for 15-minute each over some 20 hours.

Leading up to and on 6 Mar 2008 the town of his birth in Colombia, Aracataca, which turned on a parade and other celebrations for the author and literary pilgrims in 2007, can expect another wave of reverent visitors. The government has established a passenger train service to get them there, and has pledged to repair various shrines in the town. The old telegraph office featured in Garcia Marquez' books is due to be restored, as well as the wood house in which he lived as a child.

The second act of the celebrations in 2008 is likely to see readings, exhibitions and television and print features. At least two films based on his work are planned. "Love in the Time of Cholera" will be the first Hollywood adaptation of a Garcia Marquez novel. The Venezuelan government is helping to fund a film version of "The General in His Labyrinth," García Márquez's novel about the last days of Simón Bolívar, who liberated much of South America from Spanish colonialism.

Garcia Marquez is afflicted with lymphatic cancer. He ventured to Colombia twice in 2007, the second time visiting Aracataca. The town named Macondo in the novel is a fictionalized Aracataca, which has toyed with a name change to Aracataca-Macondo.

The author put his stamp on the genre of magical realism, a style of narrative that makes the fantastic seem ordinary. He is also known for other novels such as "Love in the Time of Cholera" and "Chronicle of a Death Foretold." Jun/07

World news before it happens Foresight and insight for professionals who bank on the future

COLOMBIA 6 March 2008 Another big year for Gabriel García Márquez readers. More celebrations?

Gab

Gab

World news before it happens
Foresight and insight
for professionals who bank on the future