Gabriel García Márquez was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist. Known affectionately as Gabo or Gabito 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 led him to leave law school for a career in journalism. Early on, he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha, with whom he had two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

He started his career as a journalist and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories. He is best known for his novels, such as No One Writes to the Colonel (1961), One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), 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, notably for popularizing a literary style known as magic realism, which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations. Some of his works are set in the fictional village of Macondo, inspired by his birthplace, Aracataca, and most of them explore the theme of solitude.

Upon García Márquez's death in April 2014, the president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, called him "the greatest Colombian who ever lived."