The
literary giant, considered to be one of the greatest Spanish-language authors
of all time, had spent nine days in hospital with a lung and urinary tract
infection this month.
A source close to his family confirmed his death. He had been
recovering from pneumonia in his Mexico City home since 8 April and was
reported to have been in a fragile condition.
The Colombian author of One Hundred Years of Solitude was
diagnosed with lymphatic cancer about 12 years ago and battled it successfully
before being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2006.
He was admitted into hospital for an infection, dehydration and
pneumonia. His death was confirmed by two people close to the family who spoke
on condition of anonymity out of respect for the privacy of his wife, Mercedes
and two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.
Reports in a Mexican newspaper this month that the cancer had
returned and spread to his lungs, lymph nodes and liver were publicly denied by
Colombian President Juan Manual Santos. “What they told me is that he had
pneumonia, he has got over that, he remains in delicate health which is a
reality of his age,” Santos told reporters after speaking to a member of Garcia
Marquez's family.
The 1967 novel One Hundred Years Of Solitude remains his best
known work, selling 30 million copies in more than 25 languages. In a career
spanning more than 60 years his books - among themChronicle of a Death
Foretold, Love in the Time of Cholera and Autumn of
the Patriarch - outsold everything published in Spanish except the Bible.
The author, whose career spanned journalism and fantastical
novels said to have defined and popularised the genre of magic realism, has
made few public appearances in recent years.
He was feted before the press on his birthday last month by
friends and well-wishers who brought him cake and flowers outside his home in
an exclusive neighbourhood in the south of Mexico City. He did not speak at the
event.
Gerald Martin, Garcia Marquez's semi-official biographer, told
The Associated Press that One Hundred Years of Solitude was
“the first novel in which Latin Americans recognised themselves, that defined
them, celebrated their passion, their intensity, their spirituality and
superstition, their grand propensity for failure.”
Known to his friends as Gabo, he was highly political and
campaigned for Latin American unity and an end to American meddling in the
region. He had a personal friendship with former Cuban leader Fidel
Castro.
Born in the small Colombian town of Aracataca, he won the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1982 “for his novels and short stories, in which the
fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of
imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts,” according to the
Nobel Prize website
The Independent
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