Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez returned to his southern Mexico City home Tuesday after he was treated in a hospital for eight days for what doctors described as pneumonia and related problems.
A native of Colombia, Garcia Marquez's literary work has been compared to Mark Twain and Charles Dickens and is believed to be the most popular Spanish-language author since Miguel de Cervantes of the 17th century,
according to The Associated Press.
Jaqueline Pineda, of the National Institute for Medical Sciences and Nutrition, told the AP that Garcia Marquez, 87, left the hospital after talking with doctors. Pineda said the writer's health, though, remained fragile.
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"His condition is delicate due to his age," Pineda told the
BBC News. "He will recover at home."
BBC Mundo's Alberto Najar said the author's health is stable and family members are looking after him.
Agence France-Presse reported that doctors admitted Garcia Marquez to the hospital on March 31 and he was treated with antibiotics for lung and urinary tract infections. AFP noted that his hospitalization was made public four days later.
Garcia Marquez, who has lived in Mexico for the past three decades, is best known for his 1967 novel "A Hundred Years of Solitude," which has sold more than 30 million copies globally, according to BBC News.
BBC News reported that the author had made few public appearances in recent years and a younger brother, Jaime Garcia Marquez, said his brother was suffering from dementia and had stopped writing.
"He has problems with his memory," said Jaime Garcia Marquez. "Sometimes I cry because I feel like I'm losing him."
Other well-known Gabriel Garcia Marquez novels include "Love in the Time of Cholera," "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" and "The General in His Labyrinth."
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for literature in 1982. He won the prize "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,"
according to the Nobel website.
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