Advertisement

Whether Colombian author Gabriel García Marquez likes it or not, he will have plenty of jubilees coming his way this year. "Gabo" turns 80 Tuesday but his birthday will not be his only special anniversary this year.

His first story was published 60 years ago, his literary breakthrough came 40 years ago with the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 25 years ago.

It is not known how and where García Marquez - who spends most of his time in Mexico - will spend his birthday. However, numerous cultural and artistic events are planned to mark the occasion in his native town.

Over the past few years, things have been quieter for the author credited with pioneering the literary style known as magical realism. His last novel, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, was published in 2004.

García Marquez, who has also worked as a journalist, has said he is taking a "creative pause".

"I simply stopped writing. The year 2005 was the first in my life in which I did not write one line," Gabo, as he is fondly known, told the Spanish daily La Vanguardia.

He did not say how long his break would last. He admitted that inspiration could come back, but noted that there were signs that made him doubt it.

"With the experience that I have I could without a problem write a new novel. But people would notice that my heart would not be in it," he said.

Rumour has it that one of the world's most famous authors is working on the continuation of his memoirs, which were originally set to include three volumes.

In 2002, the first volume of his memoirs, Living to Tell the Tale, was published. García Marquez portrayed his childhood, his youth and his first experiences as a young journalist, until the year 1955. He wrote the large volume - with 579 pages in its Spanish version - quickly due to a cancer, which he has since overcome.

Whatever else García Marquez has written, said or done, his name is inseparable from One Hundred Years of Solitude. This family saga set in the fictional jungle village of Macondo has sold over 400 million copies worldwide. Everything else that García Marquez has written is measured against this work.

"No, I do not wish anyone success. It is something like what happens to those mountain climbers who almost kill themselves in order to get to the summit, and when they arrive at the top, what do they do then? They climb down, as discrete and dignified as they can," the author once said.

Garcia Marquez was born March 6, 1927, in the village of Aracataca. When he finished school he first studies law, and then began a career as a journalist.

After writing features and film reviews, he published his first novel, Leaf Storm, in 1955.

García Marquez says his literary influences include Argentine Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) and American William Faulkner (1897-1962).

One Hundred Years of Solitude was published in 1967 and not only brought global recognition to the Colombian, but also put Latin American literature in vogue outside the region. Other authors, like Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, Mexican Carlos Fuentes or Chilean Isabel Allende, found a wide readership particularly in Europe.

Among García Marquez's most renowned works are No One Writes to the Colonel (1961), Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), Love in the Time of Cholera (1986) and The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975).

SPECIAL: Happy birthday, Senor Gabo!