<P> In several of García Márquez's works, including No One Writes to the Colonel, In Evil Hour, and Leaf Storm, he referenced La Violencia (the violence), "a brutal civil war between conservatives and liberals that lasted into the 1960s, causing the deaths of several hundred thousand Colombians". Throughout all of his novels there are subtle references to la violencia . For example, characters live under various unjust situations like curfew, press censorship, and underground newspapers . In Evil Hour, while not one of García Márquez's most famous novels, is notable for its portrayal of la violencia with its "fragmented portrayal of social disintegration provoked by la violencia". Although García Márquez did portray the corrupt nature and the injustices of times like la violencia, he refused to use his work as a platform for political propaganda . "For him, the duty of the revolutionary writer is to write well, and the ideal novel is one that moves its reader by its political and social content, and, at the same time, by its power to penetrate reality and expose its other side . </P> <P> Whether in fiction or nonfiction, in the epic novel or the concentrated story, Márquez is now recognized in the words of Carlos Fuentes as "the most popular and perhaps the best writer in Spanish since Cervantes". He is one of those very rare artists who succeed in chronicling not only a nation's life, culture and history, but also those of an entire continent, and a master storyteller who, as The New York Review of Books once said, "forces upon us at every page the wonder and extravagance of life ." </P> <P> García Márquez's work is an important part of the Latin American Boom of literature . His work has challenged critics of Colombian literature to step out of the conservative criticism that had been dominant before the success of One Hundred Years of Solitude . In a review of literary criticism Robert Sims notes, </P> <P> García Márquez continues to cast a lengthy shadow in Colombia, Latin America, and the United States . Critical works on the 1982 Nobel laureate have reached industrial proportion and show no signs of abating . Moreover, García Márquez has galvanized Colombian literature in an unprecedented way by giving a tremendous impetus to Colombian literature . Indeed, he has become a touchstone for literature and criticism throughout the Americas as his work has created a certain attraction - repulsion among critics and writers while readers continue to devour new publications . No one can deny that García Márquez has helped rejuvenate, reformulate, and recontextualize literature and criticism in Colombia and the rest of Latin America . </P>

One of these days gabriel garcia marquez wikipedia