Nobel Prize-winning, Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez has influenced an entire generation of writers around the world. Popularizing the genre of magic realism, García Márquez built upon the work of such writers as the Cuban Aléjo Carpentier and that master of the short story, Jorge Louis Borges, to concoct an entertaining, accessible brew of realism and fancy. "When characters now levitate or fly away," noted the García Márquez scholar Regina Janes in Contemporary World Writers, "move surrounded by butterflies, bleed strange colors, marry their aunts, watch dead birds rain from the skies, or suffer from the winds of disillusion, García Márquez's spirit has touched the page, directly or indirectly." Such influences can be readily seen in the work of international authors such as Isabelle Allende, Alice Walker, Mark Helprin, and...