Gabriel Garcia Marquez

THE suitor was determined, impassioned, even obsessed. But however fervently he pressed his case, he couldn't win over the object of his desire. Time and again he was told: I will not yield to you, not now, not ever. Of course, Hollywood producers are in the habit of whispering sweet nothings to writers, even non-Nobel laureates, in hopes of making them surrender.

After a career that included 11 novels, four collections of short stories and several compilations of journalism, Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez last year gave friends the disappointing news that he had "run out of gas" and was quitting writing. The author was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1999, and after treatment at UCLA Medical Center, he recently was pronounced free of the disease.

Oprah Winfrey has picked "Love in the Time of Cholera," the epic love story by Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, as her next book club selection. "If you love love, this book is the best love story ever," Winfrey said Friday on her daytime talk show. The novel by the Colombian-born García Márquez was published in 1985. Set on the Caribbean coast of South America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it tells the tale of a woman and two men, and an unrequited love that spans 50 years.

Novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez wouldn't travel to Wales to the Hay literary festival, so the annual book fest dubbed "the Woodstock of the mind" has gone to him in his native Colombia. The idea of bringing an offshoot of the festival held in the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye to the city of Cartagena was suggested by Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, who told festival founder Peter Florence that that was the only way Garcia Marquez would attend.

The General was so ill when he awoke on December 10 that they called Bishop Estevez with all urgency in the event he wanted to make his confession. The Bishop rushed to the house, and such was the importance he gave to the interview that he wore full Episcopal attire. But by order of the General it took place behind closed doors and without witnesses and lasted only fourteen minutes. No one learned a word they said.

Here in the birthplace of Latin America's most famous living writer, security is an ephemeral concept. Locals will swear to you that the surrounding roads are safe, even in the queasy hours between dusk and dawn. But just two years ago, 11 government soldiers were blown to pieces after being lured into a guerrilla minefield on the edge of town.

Many thanks to Reed Johnson not only for taking us on a tour of Gabriel Garcia Marquez country ["Struggling Out of Its Solitude," April 3], but for reminding American readers how much "realism" there is in the author's famous "magic realism." I shivered at the caption "Phantom Railroad" under the photo of the Aracataca train station. In "One Hundred Years of Solitude," it is from this station that 3,000 corpses -- men, women and children -- were loaded onto trains to be carried away and dumped into the sea. Today, Cienaga is the site of Puerto Drummond, created as the transport center for coal carried by private train from the La Loma mine, which was acquired by Alabama-based Drummond Co. after the International Monetary Fund compelled privatization.

Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez's bestselling book "100 Years of Solitude" has become required reading for high school students worldwide, but the title of his new work just might scare off a few educators. The book is "Memoria de Mis Putas Tristes," and the working translation is "Memories of My Melancholy Whores," according to publisher Alfred A. Knopf. It's his first fiction book in more than a decade. The Spanish-language version will be released Oct. 27, Knopf announced this week.

It may be too easy a wisecrack to call them the Gang that Couldn't Steal Straight. But the joke definitely was on the Colombian bootleggers who put out a pirated edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's new novella last week, apparently not realizing that the Nobel Prize-winning author had made some last-minute changes to the ending.

Early last month, one of America's leading literary publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, brought out a new book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian-born Nobel laureate many consider the world's greatest living writer. Since then, tens of thousands of U.S.