Amazing facts about Gabriel García Marquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'

Gabriel García Marquez started writing his best known book 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' in 1966 and it was published the next year. The book was originally written in Spanish and called 'Cien años de soledad'.
(Photo: Pexels)

'One Hundred Years of Solitude' has been translated into more than 35 languages and has sold about 30 million copies worldwide. The book is reported to outsell everything published in Spanish language except the Bible!
(Photo: Pexels)

Despite the book being hugely popular, Gabriel García Marquez declined offers of getting his masterpiece adapted on screen. The author was "concerned that the story would not translate well or fit within a single movie (or even two)," his son Rodrigo García told The New York Times. However, the rights of the book's adaptation into a web-series were sold recently by Gabriel García Marquez's sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo García. Buzz is that they both will be executive producers of the web series.
(Photo: Pexels)

The author wrote four books in Spanish before 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'. He was so disheartened that even gave up writing for roughly five years till the time when he couldn’t get the idea about his next book out of his head. That's when his wife supported him as the sole breadwinner for the family while he simply wrote his next book. He once revealed in an interview, “I did not stop writing for a single day for 18 straight months, until I finished the book.” And the rest, as they say, is history.
(Photo: Pexels)

Gabriel García Marquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' was translated by Cuban-American literature professor Gregory Rabassa, who worked as a cryptologist during the World War II. Rabassa knew seven languages and he was recommended to García Márquez through a friend. But the author had to wait for almost a whole year for Rabassa to be available to translate his work. However, when the English version of 'Cien años de soledad' was out, Gabriel García told his transaltor that it was better than his original work!
(Photo: Pexels)

Gabriel García Marquez accidentally discovered medical realism. In the book 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', an insominia plague affects the people licing in the fictional city of Macondo because of which the the villagers start forgetting words for basic things. In 1975, eight years after the book was published, this cognitive imparement was described in medical literatue as semantic dementia!
(Photo: Pexels)