Writers React to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Death

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the writer whose novels connected with thousands of people around the world, died today in his Mexico City home.

A native of Colombia, the 87-year-old Garcia Marquez sold more than 40 million books in more than 30 languages during his literary career which spanned the later half of the 20th century. His stories, which were based mostly in his native Colombia, touched upon universal issues such as solitude, colonialism, politics and love.

Novels like “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Love in the Times of Cholera” turned Garcia Marquez into a colossus of global literature and won him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. Marquez became a heroic figure in Colombia but was also an inspiration to writers, journalists and even songwriters around the world. Here’s what some of them have had to say about Garcia Marquez’s death.

Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian Nobel prize winning writer who was a longtime friend of Marquez [but also famously had a brawl with Marquez over a woman] was one of the first writers to be quoted on Marquez’s death:

Here’s what he told Peru’s Canal N:

“A great writer who’s work enjoyed a lot of prestige and diffusion has died, his novels will survive and will continue to gain readers around the world.”

Jon Lee Andersen, the New Yorker’s longtime correspondent in Latin America and other hot zones of the world, was a personal acquaintance of Marquez’s. He called the Colombian writer a “father” with a great “legacy.”

Here’s a profile that Andersen wrote about Garcia Marquez.

Jake Bernstein a Pullitzer Prize Winning Investigative Reporter, who now works at Pro Publica had one of the more effusive statements on Marquez:

Mexican Journalist Jenaro Villamil talked about Macondo, the mythical town that Garcia Marquez created as the setting of 100 yrs of solitude.

Univision anchor Jorge Ramos commented on his love for Garcia Marquez books as he grew up but also questioned the writer’s tight friendship with Fidel Castro.

Damien Cave, New York Times Correspondent, pitched in with a Garcia Marquez anecdote.

Renown Mexican historian Enrique Krauze said that Garcia Marquez “illuminated the lives,” of people from his generation.

Rene Perez, the lead singer and songwriter for Calle 13 thanked Garcia Marquez for a verse that he used in America, one of his songs.

Jorge Volpi, a Mexican writer born in 1968, just a year after “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” was published said that Garcia Marquez and Julio Borges were the greatest narrators in the Spanish language in the 20th century.

She’s not a writer or a journalist, but Shakira recalled one of Gabo’s famous verses.

Manuel Rueda is a correspondent for Fusion, covering Mexico and South America. He travels from donkey festivals, to salsa clubs to steamy places with cartel activity.