Gabriel García Márquez (born 1928) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist whose works earned him the reputation of being the greatest living writer of Castilian in Spain and Latin America.

Born in Aracata, Magdalena, Gabriel García Márquez received his early education and baccalaureate degree from the Liceo Nacional of Zipaquirá in 1946. That year he started working as a newspaper editor for El Universal in Cartagena. In 1948 he moved to Barranquilla, where he was editor of El Heraldo until 1952. Then he became editor of the liberal newspaper El Espectador in Bogotá during repressive eras of the conservative dictators Laureano Gómez and his successor, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla.

Between 1955 and 1960 several short stories and a novella had begun to establish García Márquez's fame in the Spanish-speaking world. La hojarasca (1955), a short novel, is...