Mexico City,
April 19, 2014
Magical storyteller passes away
Tributes poured on Friday for Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
the Nobel-winning Colombian author, whose “magical realism” told epic
stories of love, family and dictatorship in Latin America. Marquez, 87,
died on Thursday. Known affectionately as Gabo, the author of
One Hundred Years of Solitude
and
Love in the Time of Cholera
was one of the world’s most popular Latin American writers.
Colombia
has declared three days of national mourning. “The world has lost one
of its greatest visionary writers,” U.S. President Barack Obama said. —
AFP
KOZHIKODE,
April 19, 2014
He cast magical spell on Malayali psyche
:
Cien Anos de Soledad
.
That may not mean much to a Malayali reader. But the translation of that
Spanish phrase would — ‘Ekanthathayude Nooru Varshangal’. It is the
title of one of the largest selling Malayalam novels.
Its original author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian writer who died in Mexico on Friday, was once described by short-story writer N.S. Madhavan as the greatest Malayalam writer. They loved him, revered him, and prayed for him when he fell ill.
“Marquez is as popular as most of the greatest writers in Malayalam,” says Ravi Deecee, CEO, DC Books. “I reckon he would figure comfortably among the top 25 best-selling authors of all time in Malayalam. I do not have the exact figures with me now, but I think we would have sold about 1,00,000 copies of ‘Ekanthathayude Nooru Varshangal’ (translated by S. Velayudhan Nair) over the last three decades. The translation of Love in the Time of Cholera too was well received by readers.”
The first Malayali to write about Marquez was M.T. Vasudevan Nair. “I must perhaps be one of the first Malayalis to read his ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’; I was in the U.S. when its English translation was published. Somebody told me that Marquez would win the Nobel Prize, so I was curious. I think Ursula is one of the most powerful female characters in world literature ever,” M.T. once told this writer.
After reading the book, M.T. wrote about the novel in a periodical. “I remember reading that article in which he wrote that One Hundred Years of Solitude was an extraordinary book in the league of classics such as Anna Karenina , Madam Bovary and Wuthering Heights ,” recalls novelist C.V. Balakrishnan. “That was in the 1970s, well before Marquez won the Nobel in 1982. There was no way to get the book, translated into English by Gregory Rabassa, in Kerala. So I wrote to Rupa & Co. in Kolkata and they imported a copy for me from England.”
Balakrishnan was not disappointed. “I found that M.T. was not exaggerating at all,” he says. “When I received the book from Kolkata, I was so excited that I could not read it for a couple of days. But when I began to read, I was bowled over. He was so different from any other author I had come across till then. He was such a powerful narrator of stories and had incredible imagination, which he explained, was rooted in reality.”
Balakrishnan believes Malayali readers responded so warmly to Marquez because he offered them a brave new world. “We had little knowledge about Spanish literature before Marquez and there was sheer magic in his writing, not just magical realism,” he says. “I have collected every work of his. I have also read his journalistic pieces too and they are marvellous as well. I still remember reading the article he wrote about the custody and immigration issue involving a Cuban boy called Elian Gonzalez. It was so beautifully written that I could recall some of its sentences.”
‘Gabriel Garcia Marquez is as popular as most of the greatest writers in Malayalam’
BANGALORE, April 19, 2014
Its original author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian writer who died in Mexico on Friday, was once described by short-story writer N.S. Madhavan as the greatest Malayalam writer. They loved him, revered him, and prayed for him when he fell ill.
“Marquez is as popular as most of the greatest writers in Malayalam,” says Ravi Deecee, CEO, DC Books. “I reckon he would figure comfortably among the top 25 best-selling authors of all time in Malayalam. I do not have the exact figures with me now, but I think we would have sold about 1,00,000 copies of ‘Ekanthathayude Nooru Varshangal’ (translated by S. Velayudhan Nair) over the last three decades. The translation of Love in the Time of Cholera too was well received by readers.”
The first Malayali to write about Marquez was M.T. Vasudevan Nair. “I must perhaps be one of the first Malayalis to read his ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’; I was in the U.S. when its English translation was published. Somebody told me that Marquez would win the Nobel Prize, so I was curious. I think Ursula is one of the most powerful female characters in world literature ever,” M.T. once told this writer.
After reading the book, M.T. wrote about the novel in a periodical. “I remember reading that article in which he wrote that One Hundred Years of Solitude was an extraordinary book in the league of classics such as Anna Karenina , Madam Bovary and Wuthering Heights ,” recalls novelist C.V. Balakrishnan. “That was in the 1970s, well before Marquez won the Nobel in 1982. There was no way to get the book, translated into English by Gregory Rabassa, in Kerala. So I wrote to Rupa & Co. in Kolkata and they imported a copy for me from England.”
Balakrishnan was not disappointed. “I found that M.T. was not exaggerating at all,” he says. “When I received the book from Kolkata, I was so excited that I could not read it for a couple of days. But when I began to read, I was bowled over. He was so different from any other author I had come across till then. He was such a powerful narrator of stories and had incredible imagination, which he explained, was rooted in reality.”
Balakrishnan believes Malayali readers responded so warmly to Marquez because he offered them a brave new world. “We had little knowledge about Spanish literature before Marquez and there was sheer magic in his writing, not just magical realism,” he says. “I have collected every work of his. I have also read his journalistic pieces too and they are marvellous as well. I still remember reading the article he wrote about the custody and immigration issue involving a Cuban boy called Elian Gonzalez. It was so beautifully written that I could recall some of its sentences.”
‘Gabriel Garcia Marquez is as popular as most of the greatest writers in Malayalam’
BANGALORE, April 19, 2014
Marquez touched Kannada sensibility
His works are widely read in Karnataka
U.R Ananthamurthy (right) releasing the CD of A.N. Prasanna's (left)
Nooru Varshada Ekantha in Bangalore. Former Bangalore University
Vice-Chancellor M.S. Thimmappa (second right) and critic C.N.
Ramachandran are seen.— File photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.
Colombia may be thousands of miles away from Karnataka,
but its best-known writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who passed away
Thursday night, has left an indelible impression on the minds of Kannada
readers.
The 87-year old Latin American novelist,
short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist was widely admired here
and many of his works have been translated into Kannada. His novels have
also been adapted to theatre.
Noted writer and
translator S. Diwakar was among the first to translate Marquez’s works
into Kannada. He translated the short story,
There are no thieves in this town,
into Kannada as
Ee Urinalli Kallare Illa
in the 80s.
Mr. Diwakar is now engrossed in bringing Marquez’s
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
, a work of allegorical fiction, into Kannada, as
Ondu Saavina Munsuchana Vruttanta.
“It is not easy to translate Marquez into Kannada.
To bring the tone of original work, one should have the ability to
translate the longish sentences in his works without breaking them,” he
told
The Hindu
. After Leo Tolstoy, it was Marquez who mesmerised every section of society and reached out to them, he added.
Among other writers, Narahalli Balasubrahmanya translated select short stories of Marquez as
Marquez Kathegalu
in 1994.
Journalist and writer Ravi Belegere adapted his
Love in the Time of Cholera
, which examines romantic love in myriad forms as
Mandovi
. Writer S. Gangadharaiah translated
The Fragrance of Guava: Conversation with Gabriel Garcia Marquez
into Kannada. Writer Bidarahalli Narasimhamurthy has prepared a Marquez Reader for the Karnataka Book Authority.
Writer and cine critique A.N. Prasanna translated
One Hundred Years of Solitude
, the widely acclaimed work and considered by many as the author’s masterpiece, into Kannada as
Nooru Varshada Ekanta
.
L.S. Sheshagiri Rao translated
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
into Kannada as
Ondu Savina Vruttanta
. Writer Srinivasa Vaidya recently translated
No One Writes to the Colonel
into Kannada
.
A few enthusiastic writers have translated short
stories of Marquez and published in Sunday supplements of Kannada
newspapers. Rangavalli, a theatre group from Mysore, has been staging
the adapted version of
There are no thieves in this town
in Rangashankara.
Describing Marquez as the “writers’
writer”, noted critique H.S. Raghavendra Rao said Kannada readers were
attracted towards magical realism as they were disillusioned with
realism and modernism.
The other reason was Indian
writing tradition’s closeness to the aspect of magical realism. Pablo
Neruda and Marquez influenced Indian poetry and fiction more than any
other Latin American writers, he said. Artist Chandranath, who did
illustrations for some of Marquez’s works in Kannada, said he cannot be
called an outsider.
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