“Gregory Rabassa ’44, 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,” writes the Associated Press.
The alumnus, a longtime professor at Queens College, “died Monday at a hospice in Branford, Conn. He was 94, and died after a brief illness, according to his daughter, Kate Rabassa Wallen,” the AP writes, and continues:
“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.
“ ‘He's the godfather of us all,’ Edith Grossman, the acclaimed translator of Don Quixote and several Garcia Marquez books, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. ‘He’s the one who introduced Latin-American literature in a serious way to the English speaking world.’ “
Read the full story, published 6/14/16 by the Associated Press.
