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Gabriel García Márquez (b. 1927) was born in Aracataca, Colombia, where his maternal grandparents raised him for the first nine years of his life. He began his career in writing as a journalist while studying at the University of Cartagena, writing columns for the university's paper. In 1955 García Márquez published his first novella, La Hojarasca (tr. Leaf Storm, Penguin Books, 1972), a stream-of-consciousness story about a young boy's first encounter with death. But it would not be until the publication of Cien años de soledad (1967; tr. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Avon, 1970) that he would become the literary figure he remains to this day. He won the 1972 Neustadt Prize.