Nobel prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez has died in Mexico aged 87, his family says.
Garcia Marquez, a former journalist who was born inColombia but lived in Mexico for more than 30 years, is best known for his 1967 masterpiece, the epic, hallucinatory novel One Hundred Years of Solitude,about the trials and tribulations of one family over several generations. Widely taught in college, it has sold about 50 million copies in more than 25 languages.
His other novels include Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), about a pathological fascistCaribbean dictator, and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), about two lovers thwarted in their youth who find each when they are close to 80. Cholera was adapted as a film in 2007 starring Javier Bardem, Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Benjamin Bratt.
Garcia Marquez had been ill and had made few public appearances recently.
“Gabriel Garcia Marquez has died,” a spokeswoman for the family, Fernanda Familiar, said on Twitter.
“Mercedes and her sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo, have authorised to give me the information. Such deep sadness,” she added.
