RIP Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014) wrote many books, but for me he will always be the author of only one: One Hundred Years of Solitude. It begins:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Col. Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of 20 adobe houses built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.

For me, nothing else he ever did comes close. But for me, only a dozen other books by anyone come close, and to have written one such masterpiece is more than enough for one life.