He was like a talkative relative, one who remembered really ancient times with daguerreotypes and railways and horrible diseases and cousins and aunties. He opened doors to far away lands, noisy bars and shadowy back yards – and of course to latino bedrooms!
He was a favorite author of mine and I devoured every thing he wrote (well, in all honesty except for his biography Living to tell the tale, which just have too many personalities in the first 50 pages for me to follow!) Of course the romantic and highly implausible 100 years of solitude, the sad Love in the time of cholera, thoughtful Noone writes to the colonel (short stories), and gripping the Autumn of the patriarch and many other fantabulous stories.
When I recently had a question from a student of what he could read that would challenge and capture him and be funny at the same time, I recommended (maybe my favorite novel) Of Love and other demons, a tale about a girl who is going to die. When the Ghanaian student came back the following week and had entered the world of hopeless love, catholic monasteries and filthy mansions…I wish tio Garcia Marquez would have seen his face, glowing with the discovery.
Muchas gracias de todas historias, tio!
Photo borrowed from The Guardian where you can also read a sparkling obituary.
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His connection of character to setting is so successful, I find myself imagining the stories taking place in Ghana: The Night of the Curlews in Adabraka, The Handsomest Drowned Man in Winneba and Artificial Roses in Accra Newtown