"Solitude" in English

Nobel winner Gabriel Garcia marquez calls him the "best Latin American writer in the English language." Gregory Rabassa '44 has certainly done more than any other individual to introduce modern Latino writers to the English-speaking world. He has translated three dozen books by such greats as Mario Vargas Llosa Jorge Amado, Octavio Paz, Jacobo Timmerman and Garcia Marquez, who once said he preferred Rabassa's translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude to the original version in Spanish.

Strangely, Rabassa did not speak the language as a child. He grew up in Hanover, the son of an innkeeper, and took up the study of Spanish at Dartmouth. His first translation experience: secret code work during World War II. His subsequent work garnered him the top awards of his field, including the National Book Award and the PEN Translation Prize. He was the first person ever to receive the prestigious PEN Medal in Translation. Dartmouth did not ignore him either: It gave him an honorary degree in 1982.