The United Nations General Assembly will pay tribute next month to Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, whose death last week left the literary world grieving.
Organized at the request of the Group of Friends of Spanish -- a group of Spanish-speaking countries of the U.N. organized last year to promote their countries' language -- the May 29 special session will give representatives at the U.N. General Assembly the opportunity to honor the acclaimed Colombian author, according to Mexican daily El Universal.
"Representatives of all the world's countries can join together, united in our respect for his memory, and enrich ourselves by remembering the wise words and richness of his work," Argentine Ambassador to the U.N. María Cristina Perceval said, according to Colombian daily El Tiempo.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest literary figures of Latin America, García Márquez was an accomplished journalist and fiction writer, perhaps best known for his novel 100 Years of Solitude which earned him international fame. Only the Bible has sold more copies in Spanish than the works of García Márquez. His achievements earned him a Nobel Prize for literature in 1982.
He died last week at the age of 87. The family did not disclose the cause of death, though he had been hospitalized days earlier for an infection in his lungs and urinary tract, according to the Associated Press.
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