The Spanish editor and translator Francisco “Paco” Porrúa has died. He was 92 years old.
As the editor at Editorial Sudamericana, a publishing house in Buenos Aires, Porrúa discovered Gabriel García Márquez’s classic novel, 100 Years of Solitude.
The Buenos Aires Herald has more: “Apart from his undeniable gift as a translator and his keen eye for extraordinary, even if unknown or too daring, literary gems, Porrúa will forever be remembered as the man who, running contrary to the opinion of other editors and publishers who easily dismissed it as far too imaginative, devoured and became fascinated with García Márquez’s unpublished manuscript. Such was the fascination that Porrúa wrote him an advance payment cheque of US$500, which in 1967 was a small fortune for the impoverished writer and his wife, both living in Mexico at the time.”