Life in pictures: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Published
The Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature, has died.
Considered one of the greatest Spanish-language authors of all time, he was best known for his masterpiece of magic realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Garcia Marquez's other novels include Love in the Time of Cholera, Chronicle of a Death Foretold and the The General in His Labyrinth.
Garcia Marquez was born in the Colombian town of Aracataca in 1927. As a child, he was left in the care of his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, a veteran of Colombia's Thousand Day's War and a liberal activist, gave him an awareness of politics.
Garcia Marquez went to a Jesuit college and began to study law, but soon broke off his studies to work as a journalist - he was presented with an honorary degree by Columbia University in 1971.
In 1954, he was sent to Rome on a newspaper assignment, and since that time, lived mostly abroad, in Paris, Venezuela, and finally Mexico City. Heavily influenced by the work of William Faulkner, Garcia Marquez wrote his first novel at the age of 23 although it took seven years to find a publisher.
In 1965 he got the idea for One Hundred Years of Solitude and wrote it over a period of 12 months. Over the next 30 years it sold more than 20 million copies and was translated into more than 30 languages.
Following its publication, Garcia Marquez was asked to act as a facilitator in negotiations between the Colombian government and a number of guerrilla organisations including Farc and ELN.
He also became friends with the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a relationship that Garcia Marquez insisted was based on books. "Fidel is a very cultured man," he said in an interview. "When we're together we talk about literature."
In 1982 Garcia Marquez received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He received praise for the vibrancy of his prose and the rich language he used to convey his overflowing imagination.
In 2006 Aracataca's mayor made a failed proposal to rename Garcia Marquez's birthplace after Macondo, the fictional setting for the writer's most famous work, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
In 2007 Garcia Marquez, accompanied by his wife Mercedes, returned to his Colombian home town for the first time in more than 20 years.
In 2012 Garcia Marquez's younger brother Jamie said the writer was suffering from dementia. The Nobel prize winner made few public appearances in recent years but greeted journalists and neighbours on the occasion of his 87th birthday outside his house in Mexico City.
Garcia Marquez, who had lived in Mexico for more than 30 years, was admitted to a hospital for treatment for a lung and urinary tract infection in late March 2014. He was discharged and returned home in early April.
As well as being the creator of South American "magic realism", Garcia Marquez will also be remembered as a journalist and political figure whose writings resonated far beyond his own country.