The Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez, who wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, died on Thursday. He was 87.

Gabriel García Márquez Dies

García Márquez had been receiving treatment in a Mexican hospital for dehydration and infections, according to CNN.

"We're left with the memories and the admiration to all Colombians and also Mexicans because I think Gabo was half Mexican and half Colombian. He's just as admired in Mexico as he is in (his native) Colombia, all of Latin America and throughout the world," Jose Gabriel Ortiz, Columbia’s ambassador to Mexico, told CNN en Español.

"I believe they were somehow emotionally ready for this regrettable outcome,” he added. “They knew he was suffering from a complex, terminal disease and was an elderly man. I believe [Garcia Marquez's widow Mercedes Barcha] was getting ready for this moment, although nobody can really prepare themselves for a moment like this."

The literary giant, known for bringing magical realism into the mainstream, earned a Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. Born in Columbia, García Márquez earned the reputation of being the most influential Spanish-language author since Don Quixote scribe Miguel de Cervantes.

García Márquez began his writing career as a journalist, though he occasionally wrote short stories for Latin American publications and published the novella Leaf Storm. His big break in the literary world came in 1957 after he’d moved to Europe, allowing himself to look at his homeland through a broader lens, and penned One Hundred Years of Solitude.

One Hundred Years of Solitude won García Márquez ample critical acclaim around the world, selling tens of millions of copies. García Márquez followed up Solitude with The Autums of the Patriarch (1975), Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), The General in His Labyrinth (1990). Love in the Time of Cholera, one of García Márquez’s best-selling efforts published in 1988, was loosely based on his father’s tireless pursuit of his mother.

García Márquez’s legacy endures in literature, in the popularization of magic realism and the numerous writers he went on to inspire, which includes Spanish-language authors Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes.

García Márquez is survived by his wife, Mercedes and his sons Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

– Chelsea Regan