Gabriel García Márquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude left me gasping for air when I finished it.  A rare experience.  I can't help feeling as though afterwards García Márquez struggled to re-attain that level and never quite managed it (which isn't to say that his later books don't have merit), but One Hundred Years of Solitude is a singular experience.  It's one of those books that you might feel sort of leery about without having read because it's the sort that's always recommended by teachers, and then the whole Oprah's Book Club thing--but it really is that good.  My other favorites are the novellas "No One Writes to the Colonel" and "Chronicle of a Death Foretold."