Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, known the world over for his world of magical realism in books like "One Hundred Years of Solitude," died in his home in Mexico City at age 87.
Widely considered the most popular Spanish-language writer since Miguel de Cervantes in the 17th century, his books blended the everyday with fantasy elements such as a boy born with a pig's tail and a man trailed by a swarm of yellow butterflies.
"One Hundred Years of Solitude" was "the first novel in which Latin Americans recognized themselves, that defined them, celebrated their passion, their intensity, their spirituality and superstition, their grand propensity for failure," biographer Gerald Martin told The Associated Press.
When he accepted the Nobel prize in 1982, Garcia Marquez described Latin America as a "source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune."