It may seem surprising to some that Marquez's novels sell in large numbers in India. It is no mystery though, considering the enormous influence he has long wielded on Indian writers with his unique magical realism -- a literary genre that introduces magical elements within what are otherwise realistic settings.
From his first major work, The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, written as a series in a newspaper in 1955 -- and promptly regarded by the government as controversial -- he went on to create masterpieces that include The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), The General in His Labyrinth (1989) and, most recently, the short but exquisitely poignant Memories of My Melancholy Whores(2005). There was much non-fiction too, like Chronicle of a Death Foretold(1981) and the first instalment of his promised three-part autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale(2003).
When Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982, it came as no surprise.
Image: Marquez, left, with Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, right, and Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer, in November 24, 2006
Photograph: Ivan Garcia/AFP/Getty Images
Also see: 'What makes me angry is the level of corruption'
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