Death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Renowned Colombian novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez gathers grief and mourning all over the world. Many important people expressed their tributes and messages of praise and mourning after hearing the news of Garcia Marquez' death.

"A thousand years of loneliness and sadness for the death of the greatest Colombian of all time!" - Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos.

"With the passing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the world has lost one of its greatest visionary writers - and one of my favorites from the time I was young ... I offer my thoughts to his family and friends, whom I hope take solace in the fact that Gabo's work will live on for generations to come.". - US President Barack Obama

"A great artist is gone, but his grand art remains with us. Most authors are only shadows, but Gabriel Garcia Marquez belonged to those who cast a shadow, and he will continue to do so long after his death." Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Nobel Prize-awarding Swedish Academy.

The author received critical acclaim for his book, One Hundred Years of Solitude, which unleashed a whole new magical realism to Spanish literature that was widely welcomed by the world. Amongst his many outstanding contributions was his role in establishing a way between guerillas and the Colombian government as he became the bearer of Latin American Letters. Other major works of fiction are "The Autumn of the Patriarch" (1975), "The General in His Labyrinth" (1989) and the world-famous "Love in the Time of Cholera" (1985). The last was made into a film released in 2007, directed by Mike Newell and starring Benjamin Bratt and Javier Bardem.

Born in a small town near the northern coast of Colombia on 6 March 1927, García Márquez was raised by his grandparents for the first nine years of his life and began working as a journalist while studying law in Bogotá. He was sent to Rome in 1954 on a newspaper assignment. He lived his life mostly abroad- Paris, Barcelona, New York to name a few.

Garcia Marquez had a cancerous tumor removed from his lungs in 1992 and was treated for lymphoma seven years later. The literary giant was confined to the hospital about a week ago passed away at his home at the age of 87.