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The Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, in 1982 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, He died yesterday (17th April) in Mexico, as the local media reported. He was the author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” One Hundred Years of Solitude, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He was 87 years old.
Gabriel García Márquez (born 1928) – a Colombian novelist, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a prominent figure of magical realism, one of the most famous writers of Latin American prose which became extremely popular in Poland of the 1960s and the 1970s. He sympathised with the Communist Party of Colombia, so when on his tour of Europe as a journalist, he visited Poland, then under communist rule. This is what he wrote about Krakow: “The arrival of a foreign delegation echoed in all of the city. At 9.00 pm the entrance to the hotel was blocked by a crowd of children asking for autographs. One of the delegates wound a turban of a colourful scarf around his head, which caused a scandal. Two hours later the streets were empty”. The writer was invited to the Jama Michalikowa Café at 45 Floriańska Street (a visit to the café was a must on the itinerary of all visitors to Krakow in the times of the Polish People’s Republic). He wrote about this visit in one of his feature articles: “There was no one young in the room. A man, eighty years old at first glance, danced a polka with a plump women in a flowered dress. Everybody applauded.” A trace of his visit to our city may be found in his most popular novel – One Hundred Years of Solitude, in which we can find ”a gloomy old people’s house in Krakow”.