On the death of the very famous novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alan West Duran, an associate professor of Northeastern University discussed the award-winning author’s life, literature, and legacy.
Marquez’s book One hundred years of solitude is an appealing novel in Literature Studies. It consists of the genre of magical realism which is quite often considered synonymous with the literature of Latin America. There are many other genres like realistic, historical fiction, post-modernist narrative that exist and need to be read. Marquez considers his The Autumn of Patriarch as the best of his work. He also published other novels like Love in the time of Cholera and The General in his Labyrinth.
His work, for Columbia and throughout Latin America meant a source of pride. He was a Noble Prize Winner and this put him on the World Literary Map. His fame and popularity hid the literature of many other prominent writers like Alvaro Mutis, Fernando Vallejo and German Espinosa, etc. This was a prominent tradition of the US and Eurocentric critics who would comment and analyse only those who represented a country or all of Latin America.
Not just literature, he was also an admirer of films and cinema. Many of his works were adapted into films but not many of them were successful. Among the more successful was one of his short story La Santa (The Saint) which was adapted to film in 1989 by Lisandro Duke and was titled Milagro en Roma (Miracle in Rome). Also, the great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa wanted to film The Autumn of Patriarch but was never able to actually do it because he knew little or nothing about the Caribbean. He was advised by Marquez to locate the film in 16th century Japan and not Latin America.
He was a man who was absolutely fascinated by the notion of power. This is shown in his works like The Autumn of the Patriarch and The General in his Labyrinth. He also has raised and voiced his opinions on the issues related to the Columbian Government and the guerrilla movements within the country.
Akshara Palshetkar