Tributes poured in for Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel-winning Colombian author whose “magical realism” told epic stories of love, family and dictatorship in Latin America.
He died Thursday at age 87. Known affectionately as “Gabo,” the author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Love in the Time of Cholera” was one of the world’s most popular Latin American novelists and godfather of a literary movement that witnessed a continent in turmoil.
The longtime journalist befriended Cuban leader Fidel Castro, was once punched by fellow Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa and joked that he wrote to make his friends love him. “One thousand years of solitude and sadness for the death of the greatest Colombian of all time,” Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos tweeted.
He later declared three days of national mourning.
