Gabriel García Marquez, fiction writer and avatar of magic realism, died last Thursday in Mexico City. He is widely considered to be one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. Among the accolades he received were 1972 Neustadt Prize and the 1982 Nobel Prize for literature. Marquez pursued a self-directed education that resulted in his leaving law school for a career in journalism. He is best known for his novels, among them One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). He popularized a literary style called magic realism, in which ordinary life intersects with the surreal and the fabulous. His magic “always remained grounded in a carefully observed reality — a skill honed by his early years as a reporter (NY Times).”