Forty Years of One Hundred Years of Solitude

I've been working at translating some short stories, Los Jefes and Los Cacharros, by Mario Vargas Llosa, my first attempting at translating anything besides a poem, and hopefully I'll have some drafts of these up soon. Llosa was in the news recently because he has provided an introduction to Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, published in 1967. Marquez himself is now eighty and living, among other places, near the Aratraca, the real locale Macondo is based upon. Here is a strange connection for the anniversary, and tribute to the broad sweep of influence Marquez has had; the anniversary of the book has been celebrated by the contrarian forces of Iran and Cristopher Hitchens. Not to mention the influence on Rushdie (which may explain the Hitchens interest), who himself has a bit of a history with Iran.