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Whether Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez likes it or not, he will have plenty of jubilees coming his way this year. "Gabo" turned 80 in March but his birthday isn’t 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. Numerous cultural and artistic events are planned to mark the occasion in his native town, and in Cartagena de Indias there are plans to honour the author this month both with a film festival and at the IV International Congress of the Spanish Language. 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. Garcia 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 told the Spanish daily La Vanguardia last year. He did not say how long his break would last. He admitted that inspiration could come back, but noted that there are signs that make 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. Garcia 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 cancer, which he has since overcome. Whatever else Garcia Marquez has written, said or done, his name is inseparable from his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. This family saga set in the jungle village Macondo has sold over 400 million copies worldwide. Everything else that Garcia Marquez has written was 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 the arrive at the top, what do they do then? They climb down, as discrete and dignified as they can," the author once said. After writing features and film reviews, he published his first novel, Leaf Storm, in 1955. Garcia Marquez says his literary influences include Argentine Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) and American William Faulkner (1897-1962). — ANI
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