Known affectionately throughout Latin America as Gabo or Gabito, Marquez is counted among the greatest and most venerated literary minds of the 20th century.
As a novelist, screenwriter and journalist, Marquez is most popularly known for his works of magic realism which have earned him the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Magic realism is a genre of literature in which everyday aspects of life are elevated with a touch of the fantastic and otherworldly. Many of Marquez’ works were directly influenced by his life and his surrounding.
He said in his 1982 Nobel acceptance speech: “We have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable.”
His most famous works include the monumental One Hundred Years Of Solitude, The Autumn of the Patriarch and Love in Times of Cholera.
Born on March 6 1927 in Aracataca Columba, Marquez was left at a young age by his pharmacist father and was raised by his maternal grandparents.
He was reunited with his parents several years later and moved together with his brother to the town of Sucre, which later served as the setting for the novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
Marquez publicly attributed his talent for storytelling to his grandfather who was hero of the Thousand Days War – a civil war between the Liberal Party and Conservative Party, which tore through Columbia between 1899 and 1902.
As a young man, Marquez began his career as a journalist while studying law at the National University of Columbia in Bogota.
He quit the school to further pursue journalism in 1948 after bloody riots and the assassination of a presidential candidate led to the university being closed down.
Several years later he admitted that his true passion in life has always been to work as a journalist.
He said in a 1981 interview: “I’ve always been convinced that my true profession is that of a journalist.
“What I didn’t like about journalism before were the working conditions.”
However since the age of 18, Marquez has been interested in writing a novel about his grandparents’ house where he spent his formative childhood years.
Finally, inspiedby that house, by 1967 he had published what was arguably his greatest piece of work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, which has since sold in excess of 30 million copies worldwide.
The novel’s widespread success and acclaim led to his Nobel prize victory and venerated American author William Joseph Kennedy called it “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.”
His popularity in Columbia and Latin America also earned a unique mediator position in the Columbian Government, leading to Marquez befriending many powerful figures.
Marquez was a known friend of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and was at times considered one of his closest confidantes.
By the time of his death on April 17 2014, at the age of 87, marque has authored about 25 books.
Upon his death, Columbian President Juan Manuel Santos, called him the “greatest Columbian who ever lived”.