Gabriel José García Márquez (Latin American Spanish: [ɡaˈβɾjel ɣaɾˈsi.a ˈmaɾ.kes] ; 6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian writer and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo ([ˈɡaβo]) or Gabito ([ɡaˈβito]) throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, particularly in the Spanish language, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in 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 Pardo; they had two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo. García Márquez started as a journalist and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories. He is best known for his novels, such as No One Writes to the Colonel (1961); One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), which has sold over fifty million copies worldwide; Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981); and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style known as magic 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 (mainly inspired by his birthplace, Aracataca), and most of them explore the theme of solitude. As of 2023, he is the most-translated Spanish-language author of the 21st century. In 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts". He was the fourth Latin American to receive the honor, following Chilean poets Gabriela Mistral (1945) and Pablo Neruda (1971), as well as Guatemalan novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967). Alongside Jorge Luis Borges, García Márquez is regarded as one of the most renowned Latin American authors in history. Upon García Márquez's death in April 2014, Juan Manuel Santos, the president of Colombia, called him "the greatest Colombian who ever lived".