Marquez, master of magical realism, dies at 87(2)

Garcia Marquez [File photo /Xinhuanet]

Magic and reality

Garcia Marquez was one of the prime exponents of magical realism, a genre he described as embodying "myth, magic and other extraordinary phenomena."

It was a turbulent period in much of Latin America, when chaos was often the norm and reality verged on the surreal, and magical realism struck a chord.

"In his novels and short stories we are led into this peculiar place where the miraculous and the real converge. The extravagant flight of his own fantasy combines with traditional folk tales and facts, literary allusions and tangible - at times obtrusively graphic - descriptions approaching the matter-of-factness of reportage," the Swedish Academy said when it awarded Garcia Marquez the Nobel Prize in 1982.

Although One Hundred Years of Solitudewas his most popular creation, other classics from Garcia Marquez included Autumn of the Patriarch, Love in the Time of Choleraand Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

He admired Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and was also influenced by esteemed Latin American writers Juan Rulfo of Mexico and Argentina's Jorge Luis Borges.

US author William Faulkner inspired Garcia Marquez to create "the atmosphere, the decadence, the heat" of Macondo, named after a banana plantation on the outskirts of Aracataca.

"This word had attracted my attention ever since the first trips I had made with my grandfather, but I discovered only as an adult that I liked its poetic resonance," he wrote in his memoirs, Living to Tell the Tale.