THE legendary Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez is being remembered by Google today on what would have been his 91st birthday.

Marquez is considered one of the world's most significant authors and penned works of fiction that lure readers into a world of magical realism. Here's what you need to know…

Who is Gabriel Garcia Marquez?

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a Colombian novelist who was affectionately known as Gabo throughout Latin America.

He is considered to be one of the Spanish language's greatest ever writers and was awarded the Nobel Price in Literature in 1982.

He was born on March 6, 1927, in Aracataca in Colombia. His parents moved away when he was young and so it was his grandparents that shaped his early years.

His grandmother, in particular, liked to "treat the extraordinary as something perfectly natural" and she became the source of Gabriel's knowledge of the magical, superstitious and supernatural view of the world.

This upbringing and her deadpan delivery of the fantastic and improbable heavily influenced Gabriel's most popular novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

His career in journalism began while he was studying law at the National University of Colombia – from there he fell in love with writing and became very involved in national politics. Gabriel was a "committed leftist" throughout his life.

Gabriel had always wanted to write a novel based on his grandparents' house where he grew up. After eighteen months of writing, this became One Hundred Years of Solitude. It went on to sell more than 30 million copies around the world.

With his newfound fame, Gabriel became a facilitator between the Colombian government and guerrilla rebels and became friends with powerful leaders like Fidel Castro. He called his relationship with Castro as an "intellectual friendship".

Gabriel passed away aged 87 on April 17, 2014, in Mexico City.

Upon his death, Juan Manuel Santos, the President of Colombia, called Gabriel "the greatest Colombian who ever lived."

What was Mocondo?

Macondo is represented in the Google Doodle – it was one of the most important themes throughout Gabriel's work.

The imagined city lies deep within the Amazonian jungle, separated from the world by a vast expanse of water.

It is home to the Buendia family and strange things tend to happen there.

It first appears in Gabriel's short story Leaf Storm, but it later features in Evil Hour and is the setting of his most widely read novel – One Hundred Years of Solitude.

You can find references to Macondo in the film Chinatown, bars and restaurants are named for it in New York City and Salerno, Italy.

Because of the town's association with magical realism, when illogical things happen in real life, some people of Latin origin would portray those events as if they belonged in Macondo.

What are some of his best quotes from One Hundred Years of Solitude?

"It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams."

"What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it."

“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”

"No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing."

"The heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good."

"Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry."

"If God hadn’t rested on Sunday, He would have had time to finish the world."

"The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast."

"Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale."

LATEST GOOGLE DOODLES

What is a Google Doodle?

In 1998, the search engine founders Larry and Sergey drew a stick figure behind the second 'o' of Google as a message to that they were out of office at the Burning Man festival and with that, Google Doodles were born.

The company decided that they should decorate the logo to mark cultural moments and it soon became clear that users really enjoyed the change to the Google homepage.

In that same year, a turkey was added to Thanksgiving and two pumpkins appeared as the 'o's for Halloween the following year.

Now, there is a full team of doodlers, illustrators, graphic designers, animators and classically trained artists who help create what you see on those days.

Among the Doodles published in recent months were ones commemorating German scientist Robert Koch, Jan Ingenhousz (who discovered photosynthesis) and the 50th anniversary of kids coding languages being introduced.

Earlier in the year, the search giant celebrated the 2017 Autumn Equinox , which marked the official ending of summer and the coming of autumn.

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