Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize-Winning Author, Dies at 87

World Today

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, regarded as the most popular Spanish-language writer since Cervantes, died today in Mexico City at the age of 87.

Garcia Marquez, a former journalist who was born in Colombia 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. He died at his home in southern Mexico City, according to two people close to the family who spoke on condition of anonymity out of respect for the family’s privacy. Known to millions simply as “Gabo,” Garcia Marquez’s extraordinary literary celebrity spawned comparisons with Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. CCTV’s John Holman reports from Mexico City.

Follow John Holman on Twitter@mexicorrespond

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize-Winning Author, Dies at 87

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was praised as the most popular Spanish-language writer since Cervantes, died today in Mexico City at the age of 87. CCTV's John Holman reports.

Marquez crafted intoxicating fiction from the fatalism, fantasy, cruelty and heroics of the world that set his mind churning as a child growing up on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. One of the most revered and influential writers of his generation, he brought Latin America’s charm and maddening contradictions to life in the minds of millions and became the best-known practitioner of “magical realism,” a blending of fantastic elements into portrayals of daily life that made the extraordinary seem almost routine. In his works, clouds of yellow butterflies precede a forbidden lover’s arrival. A heroic liberator of nations dies alone, destitute and far from home. “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,” as one of his short stories is called, is spotted in a muddy courtyard.