Which Colombian novelist received the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature?

The Colombian novelist who received the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature was Gabriel García Márquez.

The Swedish Academy honored García Márquez on October 21, 1982, praising the way his novels and short stories combined the fantastic with the realistic. He was the first Colombian writer to win the literature prize and only the fourth Latin American laureate at that time.

His international breakthrough was Cien años de soledad, published in 1967. The novel’s fictional town of Macondo, recurring family names, cyclical history, ghosts, prophecies, and matter-of-fact supernatural events made him a leading figure associated with magical realism. His other major novels include The Autumn of the Patriarch, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and Love in the Time of Cholera.

A common mix-up is Mario Vargas Llosa, another major Latin American novelist who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 2010. García Márquez delivered his Nobel lecture, “The Solitude of Latin America,” in December 1982.