The Secret History of One Hundred Years of Solitude | Vanity Fair

Gabriel García Márquez began writing Cien Años de Soledad-One Hundred Years of Solitude-a half-century ago, finishing in late 1966. The novel came off the press in Buenos Aires on May 30, 1967, two days before Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released, and the response among Spanish-language readers was akin to Beatlemania: crowds, cameras, exclamation points, a sense of a new era beginning. In 1970 the book appeared in English, followed by a paperback edition with a burning sun on its cover, which became a totem of the decade. By the time García Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize, in 1982, the novel was considered the Don Quixote of the Global South, proof of Latin-American literary prowess, and the author was "Gabo," known all over the continent by a single name, like his Cuban friend Fidel.

Many years later, interest in Gabo and his great novel is surging. The Harry Ransom Center, at the University of Texas, recently paid $2.2 million to acquire his archives-including a Spanish typescript of Cien Años de Soledad-and in October a gathering of his family members and academics took a fresh look at his legacy, repeatedly invoking the book as his magnum opus.