"Hundred Years of Solitude" author due in Iran
Saturday, November 11, 2006 - ©2005 IranMania.com
LONDON, November 11 (IranMania) - Colombian novelist Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez is to visit Iran in spring, MNA reported.
The Tehran-based Colombian Embassy is consulting Iran’s Foreign Ministry to make arrangements for Garcia Marquez travel between April 10 and 30.
The 87-year-old journalist, publisher, and political activist is the recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature for his “Hundred Years of Solitude”.
Garcia Marquez was born on March 6, 1928 in Aracataca, a town in northern Colombia, where he was raised by his maternal grandparents in a house filled with countless aunts and the rumors of ghosts.
He has lived mostly in Mexico and Europe and currently spends much of his time in Mexico City.
Widely credited with introducing the global public to magical realism, he has secured both significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success.
A growing consensus of literary scholars holds that Garcia Marquez ranks alongside Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar as one of South America's greatest 20th-century authors.
Garcia Marquez is also noted for his friendship with and enthusiasm for the Cuban President Fidel Castro and has previously expressed sympathy for some Latin American revolutionary groups, especially during the 1960s and 1970s.
He has also been critical of the political situation in Colombia. Despite accusations made by members of the Colombian government decades ago, there is no evidence that he has openly supported guerrilla groups such the FARC and ELN that operate in Colombia.
Since the early 1980s, Garcia Marquez has occasionally acted as a low-profile facilitator, usually in a role that he has shared with Fidel Castro, in several of the attempts at negotiations between the government and the guerrillas.
“Santa Mara”, “Arcataca”, “In Evil Hour”, “Chronicle of a Dead Foretold”, “The General in His Labyrinth”, and “Hundred Years of Solitude” are some his novels translated into Farsi.