Gregory Rabassa

Gregory Rabassa, a translator of worldwide influence and esteem who helped introduce Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar and other Latin American authors to millions of English-language readers, has died two days ago on 13 June.

A longtime professor at Queens College, Rabassa died Monday at a hospice in Branford, Connecticut. He was 94 and died after a brief illness. 

Rabassa was an essential gateway to the 1960s Latin American "boom," when such authors as Garcia Marquez, Cortazar and Mario Vargas Llosa became widely known internationally. He worked on the novel that helped start the boom, Cortazar's "Hopscotch," for which Rabassa won a National Book Award for translation. He also worked on the novel which defined the boom, Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude," a monument of 20th century literature. 

Garcia Marquez often praised Rabassa, saying he regarded the translation of "Solitude" as a work of art in its own right.

For me personally it rakes up memories of my father who was a translator too and a wearer of a Bordeaux coloured military style beret...

Thank you, Marc