Nobel prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez has died at the age of 87.
The literary giant, considered to be one of the greatest Spanish-language authors of all time, had spent nine days in hospital with a lung and urinary tract infection this month.

A source close to his family confirmed his death. He had been recovering from pneumonia in his Mexico City home since 8 April and was reported to have been in a fragile condition.

The Colombian author of One Hundred Years of Solitude was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer about 12 years ago and battled it successfully before being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2006.

He was admitted into hospital for an infection, dehydration and pneumonia. His death was confirmed by two people close to the family who spoke on condition of anonymity out of respect for the privacy of his wife, Mercedes and two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.
The cause of Garcia Marquez’s death was not immediately known but he was recently hospitalised for a lung and urinary tract infection in Mexico City.

He was sent home last week but his health was said to be “very fragile” because of his age.

The BBC’s Will Grant in Mexico City says his loss will be particularly felt in his native Colombia but in Mexico too, which for more than 30 years became his adopted home.
Garcia Marquez was considered one of the greatest Spanish-language authors, best known for his masterpiece of magical realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The 1967 novel sold more than 30 million copies and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
The novelist was also an accomplished journalist whose reporting shone in his work News of a Kidnapping.

The non-fiction book recounted high-profile abductions by the Medellin drug cartel run by Pablo Escobar, a notorious Colombian drug lord who died in 1993.
The novelist was at times a political figure too.

His friendship with the former Cuban President Fidel Castro sparked some controversy among literary and political circles in Latin America.

But he insisted their friendship was based on books.

“Fidel is a very cultured man,” he said in an interview. “When we’re together we talk about literature.”

Unlike other authors in the region, his work transcended Latin America with One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was translated into more than 30 languages.

The Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda called the novel “the greatest revelation in the Spanish language since Don Quixote”, the 17th-century masterpiece by Spain’s Miguel de Cervantes.
Garcia Marquez had been ill and had made few public appearances recently.

He achieved fame for pioneering magical realism, a unique blending of the marvellous and the mundane in a way that made the extraordinary seem routine.

With his books, he brought Latin America’s charm and teaming contradictions to life in the minds of millions of people.

Based on reports by BBC and Independent