• Submitted by: admin
• Arts and Culture
• Literature
• 12 / 01 / 2006

World renowned Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Nobel prizewinner in literature, said Thursday he was happy to be in this capital to celebrate the 80th birthday of Cuban President Fidel Castro.

"What makes me happier is that while I have come to his 80th birthday, I will come to his 100th party later," said the creator of literary realism in Latin American literature, and a personal friend of the Cuban president.

Garcia Marquez, known affectionately to his friends as "Gabo", was born on March 6, 1928, in Aracataca, a town on the Colombian Atlantic coast. He worked as a journalist, movie critic, and was a collaborator for newspapers from Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Spain and the United States.

In 1955, he traveled to Europe for the first time as correspondent for El Espectador and remained there for four years after publishing "El Relato de un Naufrago" (Tale of a Shipwreck) which provoked government disapproval in his native country.

In 1958, after living in London for two months, he decided to return to America, live in Venezuela and work for the Venezuelan magazine Momentos.

In 1960 after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, he lived in Havana for six months working for Prensa Latina, directed then by Argentine journalist Jorge Ricardo Masetti, friend of Ernesto Che Guevara.

Garcia Marquez created Prensa Latina s office in Bogota, and as a writer, his books have been translated to almost every language.

Source: CubaSi