Gabriel García Márquez was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist, affectionately known as "Gabo" throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, particularly in the Spanish language. In 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

García Márquez pursued a self-directed education that resulted in his leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on, he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha; they had two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo. He also had a daughter, Indira, with Mexican writer Susana Cato.

He started as a journalist and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but he is best known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), which sold over fifty million copies, Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magical realism, which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo, mainly inspired by his birthplace, Aracataca, and most of them express the theme of solitude.

With Jorge Luis Borges, García Márquez is considered one of the best-known Latin American writers in history. Upon his death in April 2014, Juan Manuel Santos, the president of Colombia, called him "the greatest Colombian who ever lived."