Austin, Texas, Oct 29 (EFE).– When a young Salman Rushdie was introduced to the English edition of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” in 1975, shortly after having his first novel – “Grimus” – published, it marked the beginning of a love affair with the work of Colombian Nobel literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an author he never met in person.

The 68-year-old Rushdie recalled his first encounter with the literature of Garcia Marquez (1927-2014) while delivering a keynote address Wednesday night at a symposium organized by the University of Texas at Austin.

That event was held to mark the opening for research of that institution’s collection of personal material from the late Colombian author, known affectionately as “Gabo.”

The British Indian author said a friend of his remarked, after reading “Grimus,” that he had obviously been “deeply influenced” by Garcia Marquez.

The then-27-year-old Rushdie had never heard of the South American novelist, but his curiosity had been piqued.

Speaking on the opening night of the Oct. 28-30 symposium, titled “Gabriel Garcia Marquez: His Life and Legacy,” Rushdie recalled his first brush with the opening lines of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” – “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

Rushdie said that like millions of people worldwide he “fell deeply in love” with Garcia Marquez’s writing upon reading those words and that that love had now lasted 40 years.

“I knew Garcia Marquez’s colonels and generals, or at least their Indian and Pakistani counterparts; his bishops were my mullahs; his market streets were my bazaars. His world was mine, translated into Spanish,” the British Indian writer said, quoting from an article he published in The New York Times shortly after the Colombian author’s death in April 2014.

He stressed how both their worlds shared pronounced conflicts, adding “both are places with a strong colonial history, and in both places religion is of great importance and God is alive, and so, unfortunately, are the godly.”

Rushdie also said that “One Hundred Years of Solitude” had introduced him to the rich waters of Latin American literature, which he had known nothing about until then.

He also pointed out although Garcia Marquez’s novels are seen as a world of fantasy, in the Colombian’s work “imagination is used to enrich reality, not to escape from it.”

While on a visit to Mexico City, Carlos Fuentes put Rushdie in contact with Garcia Marquez by telephone, the closest contact he was to have with the Colombian author.

Rushdie, who did not speak Spanish, and Marquez, who claimed he did not speak English, ended up chatting in French, and the conversation centered on influences in their respective works and the differences in their writings.

Garcia Marquez seemed more interested in Rushdie’s opinion on his journalistic output rather than his literary creations, which took the author of “Midnight’s Children” by complete surprise.

“I never met him (in person), and I greatly regret that,” Rushdie said. EFE