Gabriel Garcia Marquez has appeared in public to receive a "special tribute" at the International Congress of Spanish Language, reports Frank Bajak in The Guardian.

The crowd gave him a standing ovation. Marquez "clasped his hands above his head like a prizefighter as he entered the auditorium" before recounting the days of poverty that preceded the publication of the formidable One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Fifty million people have now read the book, which took 18 months to write.

Bill Clinton said that Marquez is "the most important writer of fiction in any language since William Faulkner died".

Strange that The Literary Saloon failed to cover the story.

In other Marquez news, The New York Times publishes a photo of the writer with a black eye given to him by Mario Vargas Llosa. I mentioned the story earlier this month.

A Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, used the photo on the cover of its 6 March issue. Photographer Rodrigo Moya said that "his friend Mr. García Márquez had asked him to take his portrait with a black eye". Pablo Espinosa, the newspaper's cutural editor, said that Moya was asked to write an essay to accompany the photo because "not everybody knew the particulars" of the famous story.

Vargas Llosa hit Marquez at a cinema in Mexico City in 1976.

On Marquez' reason for having the photo taken, Moya said: "He is very meticulous and likes to document his life in different moments. He just had the idea that he wanted to have a picture with a black eye."