kolkata as the world pays tribute to gabriel garcia marquez his books are flying off the shelves in kolkata the buying frenzy is the same seen after he won his nobel prize in 1982 say oldtimers in the famed boi para there is such a rush for the nobel laureates works that oxford bookstores and starmark have run out of stock i wanted to buy the entire collection of garcia marquezs works but got only two titles no one writes to the colonel and the general in his labyrinth everything else is sold out i have placed orders but they say i can get them next month said ankita biswas a buyer at starmark even flipkart has run out of stock she added ranjit adhikary sales manager of supernova publishers penguins exclusive distributor in eastern india said the demand for garcia marquezs books has shot up exponentially every day we receive orders for at least 90100 copies of each title the two books most in demand one hundred years of solitude and love in the time of cholera are out of stock they will be back in circulation next week college street bookseller suvojit saha said demand for garcia marquezs books had shot up in 1982 it has again peaked after his death we are sending away customers as there is no supply we had about 30 titles we sold out last saturday kolkatas love affair with garcia marquez is not new way back in 1971 when manabendra bandyopadhyay introduced him in the comparative literature syllabus at jadavpur university nobody had heard of the author but he noticed an instant liking among students for one hundred years of solitude the first sign was that students read the text themselves which was definitely not the case with someone like joyce bandyopadhyay said four decades later nothing has changed twentyfouryearold siddhartha dey read solitude for the first time when he was in class xii he has reread it 10 times what brought gabo so close to generations of readers so removed from him in geographical space for former chief minister buddhadeb bhattacharjee it is garcia marquezs epic canvas that drew his attention bhattacharjee who calls himself a diehard fan of garcia marquez has translated two of his novellas into bengali the story of the shipwrecked sailor and clandestine in chile take the autumn of the patriarch for instance the sweep of the novel startled me at that time latin america had seveneight military dictators who exercised ruthless power it could be the story of any of them their despotic rule as well as their helplessness dont forget this was the novel garcia marquez said was closest to his heart said the veteran marxist asked about his experience of translating the author bhattacharjee said he is fascinated by the interplay of fact and fiction both the books that i translated are based on real incidents that garcia marquez as a journalist came to know of i was particularly