MEXICO CITY: Presidents, writers and celebrities paid tribute Friday to Nobel-winning Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the late giant of Latin American literature whose work inspired generations of story-tellers.

Garcia Marquez, who died Thursday at age 87, was mourned in the European cities where he once lived, the United States and his native Colombia that inspired his surreal stories of family, love and dictatorship.

Known affectionately as “Gabo,” the author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” had friends in the corridors of power, literary circles and the backstages of the entertainment world.

Cuban President Raul Castro, whose brother Fidel was a close friend of Garcia Marquez, addressed a message of condolences to the writer's wife, Mercedes Barcha.

“The world and particularly the people of Latin America have physically lost an emblematic writer and intellectual,” said Castro in the missive published on the Cubadebate website.

Colombia declared three days of mourning while officials in Mexico City, where he lived for decades until his death, said a public tribute would be held at the Bellas Artes cultural palace on Monday.

Admirers left flowers, books and candy in front of his house. Garcia Marquez last appeared in public on his birthday, March 6, wearing his favorite flower, a yellow rose, on his lapel, but he only waved and said nothing.

'My maestro has died'

“He is the most important of all Latin American writers of all times,” said Chilean novelist Isabel Allende.

“My maestro has died. I will not mourn him because I have not lost him: I will continue to read his words over and over.”

English novelist and screenwriter Ian McEwan said his literary career was “an extraordinary phenomenon.”

”He really was a one-off and one would really have to go back to (Charles) Dickens to find a writer of the very highest literary quality who commanded such extraordinary persuasive powers over whole populations,” McEwan said.

The author's wife and two sons said his remains would be cremated but his final resting place has yet to be disclosed.

The cause of death was not revealed but he died one week after returning home from a hospital where he was treated for pneumonia.

“All of Colombia is in mourning because the most admired and cherished compatriot of all time is gone,” Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said in a televised address late Thursday.

'Literary giant'

A champion of left-wing causes, the longtime journalist forged a controversial friendship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, but he also counted foes of communism like former US president Bill Clinton among his friends.

“The world has lost one of its greatest visionary writers,” US President Barack Obama said.

French President Francois Hollande hailed Garcia Marquez as a “literary giant.”

”His articles as a committed journalist and his tireless battle against imperialism made him one of the most influential South American intellectuals of our time,” Hollande said.

In his Nobel speech in 1982, Garcia Marquez said it was the “outsized reality” of brutal dictatorships and civil wars in Latin America, “and not just its literary expression,” that got the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters.

Swedish author Per Waestberg, a member of the academy that chooses Nobel recipients, said the book “The Autumn of the Patriarch” “could have deserved the Nobel on its own.”

Garcia Marquez's other famous books include “Love in the Time of Cholera,””Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” “The General in His Labyrinth” and his autobiography “Living to Tell the Tale.”

His final novel, “Memories of My Melancholy Whores,” was published in 2004.

“With his stories, he created a world of his own which is a microcosmos,” the Nobel Prize organization said.

“In its tumultuous, bewildering, yet, graphically convincing authenticity, it reflects a continent and its human riches and poverty.”

Born March 6, 1927, in the village of Aracataca on Colombia's Caribbean coast, Garcia Marquez was the son of a telegraph operator.

He was raised by his grandparents and aunts in a tropical culture influenced by the heritage of Spanish settlers, indigenous populations and black slaves. His grandfather was a retired colonel.

The exotic legends of his homeland inspired him to write profusely. His masterpiece, “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” was translated into 35 languages and sold more than 30 million copies.

The book, published in 1967, is a historical and literary saga about a family from the imaginary Caribbean village of Macondo between the 19th and 20th centuries, a novel that turned the man with the mustache and thick eyebrows into an international star.