Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez was born in 1927 in Aracataca, Colombia. Gabriel García Márquez's background is described as Colombian, from the Caribbean coast. Growing up, the family was working class — telegraph-operator father; raised for eight years by his grandparents — a war-veteran colonel and a grandmother full of ghost stories. Pawned the household to finish the novel; couldn't afford to mail the full manuscript to the publisher.

Born

1927 · Aracataca, Colombia

Roots

Colombian, from the Caribbean coast

Family

Working class

Telegraph-operator father; raised for eight years by his grandparents — a war-veteran colonel and a grandmother full of ghost stories.

Education

Law at the National University of Colombia (abandoned for journalism)

Started with

A grandmother's stories

Her matter-of-fact way with the supernatural set the voice of his fiction.

Affiliations & societies

None documented.

Information only — claims like these are often unverifiable and may be wrong.

The pathway

1. 1948 · age 21
   Journalism

   Drops law during the Bogotazo upheaval; writes for coastal papers with the Barranquilla Group.

2. 1955 · age 28
   Leaf Storm

   His first novel appears after years of publisher rejections.

3. 1956 · age 29
   Broke in Paris

   His newspaper is closed by the dictatorship while he is its correspondent; he redeems bottles for centimes.

4. 1965 · age 38
   Turns the car around

   The opening of One Hundred Years of Solitude arrives on the road to Acapulco; he writes for eighteen months while his wife pawns household goods.

5. 1967 · age 40
   One Hundred Years of Solitude

   They can only afford postage for half the manuscript; the printing sells out in weeks. Over 50 million copies follow.

6. 1982 · age 55
   Nobel Prize in Literature