Gabriel García Márquez, the influential, Nobel Prize-winning author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera," has died, his family and officials said.

He was 87.

The literary giant was treated in April for infections and dehydration at a Mexican hospital.

García Márquez, a native of Colombia, is widely credited with helping to popularize "magical realism," a genre "in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination," as the Nobel committee described it upon awarding him the prize for literature in 1982.Colombian author became standard-bearer for Latin American letters after success of One Hundred Years of Solitude Edmund White: García Márquez made magic realism his own

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From the archive: 1970 review of One Hundred Years of Solitude Five must-reads Gabriel García Márquez, the Colombian novelist whose “One Hundred Years of Solitude” established him as a giant of 20th-century literature, died on Thursday at his home in Mexico City. He was 87.

Cristóbal Pera, his former editor at Random House, confirmed the death. Mr. García Márquez learned he had lymphatic cancer in 1999, and a brother said in 2012 that he had developed senile dementia.Nobel prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez has died in Mexico aged 87, his family says.

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.

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.Gabriel García Márquez, the Colombian novelist whose “One Hundred Years of Solitude” established him as a giant of 20th-century literature, died on Thursday at his home in Mexico City. He was 87.

Cristóbal Pera, his former editor at Random House, confirmed the death. Mr. García Márquez learned he had lymphatic cancer in 1999, and a brother said in 2012 that he had developed senile dementia.

Mr. García Márquez, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, wrote fiction rooted in a mythical Latin American landscape of his own creation, but his appeal was universal. His books were translated into dozens of languages. He was among a select roster of canonical writers — Dickens, Tolstoy and Hemingway among them — who were embraced both by critics and by a mass audience.Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel Prize-winning magic realist behind the beloved novels One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, has died at the age of 87, according to sources close to the family.

The beloved Spanish-language writer died at home in Mexico City around midday, sources told The Associated Press, confirming Mexican newspaper reports Thursday afternoon. The individuals spoke on condition of anonymity out of respect for the family's privacy.