Martin taught for many years at
Portsmouth Polytechnic, where he helped to organize the world's first undergraduate degree in
Latin American Studies, which pioneered the student year abroad in Latin America. In 1984, he became the first Professor of
Hispanic Studies in the Polytechnic sector. He went on to work for 25 years as the only English-speaking member of the Colección Archivos in Paris and in Pittsburgh, and became President of the Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana. In the 1980s he concentrated on the history of literature and the arts, contributing three major chapters to the Cambridge History of Latin America and published
Journeys through the Labyrinth: Latin American Fiction in the Twentieth Century (1989). From 1992 to 2007, he was the
Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Languages at the
University of Pittsburgh. His research and publications have focused on the Latin American novel. His PhD was devoted to
Nobel Prize winner
Miguel Angel Asturias. Martin has also produced critical editions of
Hombres de maíz (1981) and
El Señor Presidente (2000), as well as translating the former work. He has also translated novels by
Rafael Chirbes and
Max Aub. In 2008, he authored
Gabriel García Márquez: A Life, an official biography of
Gabriel García Márquez with
Bloomsbury and
Knopf. The book, which Martin put together over 17 years of research, has been translated in over 30 languages. In 2012, he wrote an Introduction to Gabriel García Márquez for CUP. ==Published works==