The novels of the Nobel prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who died today aged 87, grabbed you from the first sentence and remained lodged in your brain like a stray bullet. Many of the opening paragraphs dealt with death, echoing the title of his 1981 classic ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold.’ As the postmaster quips in ‘No One Writes to the Colonel’: “The only thing that comes for sure is death, Colonel.”
Here are eight of my favourite openings from the great Colombian journalist, novelist and political agitator: