"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is Still a Bestseller

Life moves slowly in the coastal town of Cartagena de Indias on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. But one recent event caused people to line up for hours for a glimpse at one of Colombia's most famous celebrities. It wasn't the pop singer Shakira but the Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez.

The noted author was making at an appearance at the fourth International Congress of the Spanish Language. The event marked the release of a new edition of the classic novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. When the new edition went on sale this past week in Colombia, bookstores sold more than 14,000 copies in the first four hours.

This year also marks the fortieth year since One Hundred Years of Solitude was originally published in 1967. At that time Garc�a M�rquez was living in Mexico and barely had enough money to send the manuscript to a publisher. The story found a publisher in Buenos Aires, Argentina and became an instant bestseller. The book is still purchased by thousands of people each year and is required reading in almost every Spanish literature course. It is estimated that more than 50 million people have One Hundred Years of Solitude since it was first published.

At the language congress a tribute was held to honor the Colombian writer. This was no ordinary tribute from a group of academics but featured Latin superstars like Carlos Vives and Fito P�ez as well as celebrities from throughout Latin America.

Known affectionately as Gabo, G�rcia M�rquez recently spent his 80th birthday not in Colombia but in Cuba visiting his long-time friend Fidel Castro who is also the same age. The two men were seen walking around outside Castro's home in Havana.

One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the tragic story of one family who lived in the mythical town of Macondo in Colombia. G�rcia M�rquez changed the face of literature through the manner in which he told their story, which in many ways is also the story of Colombia itself. The straightforward narrative is mixed with fantastical actions and events, a style that came to be known as magical realism.

G�rcia M�rquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Other works by G�rciz M�rquez include The Autumn of the Patriarch, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Love in the Time of Cholera, The General in His Labyrinth, and Of Love and Other Demons.

The next International Congress of the Spanish Language will be held in 2010 in Chile.