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

García Márquez pursued a self-directed education, which 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. It is a lesser known fact that Gabriel had a daughter with Mexican writer Susana Cato, part of an extramarital affair. They named her Indira, and she took her mother's last name.

He started as a journalist and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories. García Márquez 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 achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style known as magical 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, Juan Manuel Santos, the president of Colombia, called him "the greatest Colombian who ever lived."