literary great Gabriel García Márquez has passed away. The Nobel Prize-winning author, who will be forever remembered for his works ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ and ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’, died on April 17. He was 87 years old.

Gabriel García Márquez sadly passed away on April 17, after receiving treatment for infections and dehydration at a Mexican hospital earlier in the month, his family and officials said.

Gabriel, a Columbian native who helped popularize the genre of magical realism, has often been referred to as the most important Spanish author since Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote Don Quixote in the 16th century, CNN reportsGabriel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982 “for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent’s life and conflicts.”

After he became a Nobel laureate, Gabriel told a correspondent: “I have the impression that in giving me the prize, they have taken into account the literature of the sub-continent and have awarded me as a way of awarding all of this literature.Gabriel’s cousin, Margarita Marquez, and the Colombian ambassador to Mexico, José Gabriel Ortiz, confirmed the author’s death to CNN on April 17.

“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 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 [Gabriel's widow, Mercedes Barcha] was getting ready for this moment, although nobody can really prepare themselves for a moment like this.”