Gabriel García Márquez Dies at 87

'One Hundred Years of Solitude' – His 1967 Masterpiece

The Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez died in his home in Mexico City today at age 87. He was best known for his 1967 masterpiece, "One Hundred Years of Solitude," which recounted the travails of the abundant and obsessive Columbia’s Buendía clan.

The novel is the exemplar of magical realism technique, mixing “dreamlike, fantastical vignettes with sharply focused realism,” said Wall Street Journal in an obituary today. The novel's historic sweep and timeless writing helped García Márquez win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.

The news of his death triggered an outpouring of grief from Columbians. The country’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, tweeted: "One-thousand years of solitude and sadness for the death of the greatest Colombian of all time!"

Proudly leftist and anti-imperialist, García Márquez used his fame to try to lobby for Latin American unity.

Among his other novels, were “Autumn of the Patriarch,’ about a Caribbean tyrant; “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” which painstakingly narrates a small-town murder; “Love in the Time of Cholera,” about two lovers who wait half a century to reunite, and “The General in his Labyrinth,” detailing independence hero Simón Bolívar's inglorious last days.

File photo: Gabriel Garcia Marquez waves at his house on his 87th birthday; 6 March 2014, Mexico City. (AFP/Getty Images/WSJ)