Gabriel García Márquez, born on March 6, 1927, in the Colombian village of Aracataca as the eldest of sixteen children of a telegraph operator, spent his early childhood with his grandparents. After abandoning his law studies, he worked as a journalist in Cartagena, Barranquilla, and Bogotá starting in 1948, and spent time in Rome and Paris. During these early years in journalism, he also produced his first literary texts. García Márquez always saw himself as both a writer and a journalist. In 1957, he traveled as a reporter to East Germany and the USSR. He represented the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina in Bogotá and New York. The publication of his novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967) made him internationally famous overnight. With a global circulation of well over ten million copies, this novel became the most-read Latin American work. In 1982, Gabriel García Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He constantly fought against corruption and drug crime in Colombia, was a longtime friend of Fidel Castro, and was an avowed socialist. He produced an extensive body of narrative and journalistic work and is regarded as one of the most significant and successful writers in the world. Gabriel García Márquez lived in Mexico City and Cuba. The Nobel laureate passed away in April 2014.