MEXICO CITY—Nobel literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, arguably best known for his “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” is suffering from senile dementia, his brother says.
The 85-year-old author’s brother Jaime told El Universal in Mexico, where Garcia Marquez lives, that he speaks to the 1982 Nobel winner nearly every day from their native Colombia, hoping to help keep some of his memories alive.
“What he has are some memory issues; in our family, we all end up with senile dementia. I am starting to get some of the onset complications and he already is in the throes of it,” said Jaime Garcia Marquez.
He said it had been a very slow downward slide for his author brother, who has had some symptoms of the condition since 1999, when he was treated for lymphatic cancer — a condition which nearly killed him.
The author then underwent chemotherapy treatment, which sped up the pace of memory loss, his brother added.
Garcia Marquez, who is also known for “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “No One Writes to the Colonel,” lives in Mexico City with his wife Mercedes.
Garcia Marquez was born on March 6, 1927 in the Colombian Caribbean town of Aracataca but has lived in Mexico for several decades.
Weakened by cancer, he did not resume writing after his latest novel, “Memories of My Melancholy Whores,” in 2004.
This year marks the 30th anniversary since Garcia Marquez received the Nobel Prize for Literature. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” has already sold 30 million copies worldwide.
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” tells the saga of a troubled family of Macondo, an imaginary village, in the 19th and 20th centuries. It has been translated into 35 languages but only now is appearing in a digital edition.