One of the most important writers of the 20th century, Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez (1927-2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist who popularized magical realism, a technique which uses magical elements and events in order to explain real experiences. In 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is perhaps best known for his book One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), a novel that was both a critical and commercial success.