Nobel Literary Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa has expressed his grief and bidded farewell to the greatest novelist of his generation the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Peru's most-distinguished living author has said "A great writer has died whose work had brought great difusion and prestige to the literature of the Spanish language."
Vargas Llosa added, "His novels will survive him and will continue to win more readers everywhere".
The death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who also won the Nobel Prize for Literatura in 1982, at the age of 87 in Mexico city on Thursday has attracted world attention and international tributes.
Regarded as one the greatest writers in the Spanish language, Garcia Marquez's most-aclaimed works include One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Colera which have been translated over 30 languages.
He wrote his first piece of fiction when he was just 20 after a newspaper's editor said that Colombia's youngest generation has nothing to offer in the way of good literature anymore. He was mistaken in this belief.
His 1967's masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude has been read by everyone from presidents to youngsters and with his unique blending of magical realism he became popular around the world.
Garcia Marquez was released from hospital in Mexico city last week after contracting a lung and urinary track infection. Then, he was last seen in public on his birthday at his adopted home in Mexico. He died there after several years of ill health.
Published: 4/18/2014