Garcia Marquez in 'very fragile' condition: family

MEXICO CITY - Agence France-Presse

Gabriel Garcia Marquez greets journalists and neighbours on his birthday outside his house in Mexico City March 6, 2014. REUTERS Photo

Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez is in "very fragile" condition and at risk of complications while recovering at his Mexico City home from a recent hospitalization, his family said Monday.
      
The family issued the statement one week after the 87-year-old Nobel literature laureate was released from a Mexico City hospital, where he had stayed for eight days to be treated for lung and urinary tract infections.
      
The brief statement made no mention of a report earlier in the day by Mexican newspaper El Universal that Garcia Marquez is fighting cancer and is receiving palliative care due to his age.
      
El Universal, citing "reliable sources," said the cancer had spread to his lungs and liver.
      
After he was released from the hospital last week, Garcia Marquez was taken by ambulance to his home in the Mexican capital, where he has lived for decades, to recover from the infections, which were treated with antibiotics.
      
An oxygen tank and a medical bed were taken to his house right before the author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" left the hospital on April 8.
      
The family's statement, published by Colombian daily El Tiempo, said that Gabo, as he is affectionately known, would continue recovering at home.
      
"His condition is stable but very fragile and there are risks of complications due to his age," said his wife, Mercedes, and sons Rodrigo and Gonzalo.
      
The family thanked friends and journalists for showing "affection" but urged the media to respect his privacy.
      
The journalist was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1999 but was later declared to be free of the disease.
      
Garcia Marquez has made fewer and fewer public appearances in recent years.
      
His last hospitalization on March 31 was only made public four days later.
      
His son, Gonzalo Garcia Barcha, told reporters at the time that the family decided to hospitalize him as a precaution and that there was no emergency.
      
The author's last public outing was on March 6, when he came out of his house to greet journalists who visited him for his birthday.
      
Garcia Marquez smiled, accepted gifts and posed for photographs, but he did not speak to reporters.
      
His brother Jaime said in July 2012 that his famous sibling was suffering from dementia.
      
The 1982 Nobel laureate is a pioneer of s0-called magical realism, writing epic stories of love, family and dictatorship in Latin America.
      
"One Hundred Years of Solitude" has sold more than 30 million copies and has been translated into 35 languages since it was first published in 1967.
      
His other works include "Love in the Time of Cholera" and "Chronicle of a Death Foretold." His last published novel is "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" in 2004.
      
The Nobel Committee awarded him the 1982 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."