Colombia To Celebrate Literary Great On Tuesday

Gabriel Garcia Marquez who passed away aged 87 at his home in Mexico City on April 17 will be celebrated with a series of events in his native country of Colombia on Tuesday.



The author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982, had been poor of health in recent years having suffered from lymphatic cancer and Alzheimer's disease and was only released from hospital in early April after infections to his urinary tract and lungs. Upon the news of his passing, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos declared three days of national mourning.



Across Colombia events are being planned to commemorate the life of the author of such notable tomes as "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "The "Autumn of the Patriarch," "Love in the time of the Cholera," "News of a Kidnapping" and various collections of journalism. 



While President Santos will first fly to Mexico City to attend a ceremony alongside his Mexican counterpart, President Enrique Peña Nieto, he will then return to Colombia to head a church service in the Primada Cathedral in Bogota.



Large screens will be erected in the Plaza de Bolivar in Bogota and the ceremony will be broadcast on national television. At the same time, the people of Aracataca, Garcia Marquez' hometown 56 miles south of the Caribbean city of Santa Marta will be holding a symbolic burial for their most internationally famous son.  



Garcia Marquez had lived for more than three decades in Mexico, visiting Colombia infrequently.



On Wednesday there will be readings of Garcia Marquez's novel "Nobody Writes to the Colonel" in parks and plazas once. Garcia Marquez will also be remembered at the International Bogota Book Fair which commences on April 29.  



englishnews@aa.com.tr - Washington DC