Dementia Ends Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Writing Career

Nobel literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez is reportedly suffering from dementia after a long battle with lymphatic cancer, and can no longer write.

The Colombian author’s brother says he has to speak to Marquez everyday 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,” Jaime Garcia Marquez told El Universal in Mexico. 

“I am starting to get some of the onset complications and he already is in the throes of it.” 

The 85-year-old author started showing dementia symptoms in 1999, when he was treated for lymphatic cancer, a condition which nearly killed him.

According to his brother, chemotherapy treatment sped up the pace of memory loss. 

“Chemotherapy saved his life, but it also destroyed many neurons, many defenses and cells, and accelerated the process. But he still has the humor, joy and enthusiasm that he has always had,” Jaime said. 

Born in 1927 in the Colombian Caribbean town of Aracataca, Garcia Marquez is best known for his Nobel winner novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. 

The novel is a work of magical realism telling the history of seven generations of the Buendia family in a fictional Colombian village. It has sold 30 million copies worldwide and been translated into 35 languages. 

Love in the Time of Cholera and No One Writes to the Colonelare the other famous books written by Garcia Marquez.