Colombian Nobel Prize winning author hospitalized

Colombian Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 87, was hospitalized in Mexico City on Thursday suffering from dehydration and infections to his lungs and urinary tract. Garcia Marquez was responding to treatment, said a hospital official, and a decision on his discharge would be made in coming days.  He remains under observation at the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador in Mexico City. “He is being very well attended to and we expect him to be discharged on either Monday or Tuesday,” said his son Gonzalo Garcia Barcha. 

Garcia Marquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his work “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (1967) and has been living in Mexico for the past three decades. He makes infrequent appearances in public the last being on his birthday on March 6. Known worldwide for his journalism, novels and for the literary genre of magic realism Garcia Marquez is Colombia’s only Nobel-prize winning author. Once news of Garcia Marquez’ hospitalization broke it spread rapidly to become front page headlines around the world.

Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos took to his twitter account to send a message wishing all the best to “Gabo”, as he is affectionately known. “All of Colombia wishes a speedy recovery to the greatest author of all: Gabriel Garcia Marquez,” said President Santos. 

There have been concerns in the past over the Nobel laureate’s health as in 1999 he underwent treatment for lymphatic cancer, which his younger brother Jaime Garcia Marquez said had hastened his memory problems and possible senile dementia, a condition said to run in the family. Due to these health issues Garcia Marquez no longer writes, but his works continue to be the most widely sold books in the Spanish language.