8 Jul 2012

Garcia Marquez no longer writing

9:35 am on 8 July 2012

The brother of Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez has acknowledged the Nobel Prize-winner has dementia.

Jaime Garcia Marquez told students at a lecture in Catagena that his brother, who is 85, is losing his memory and is no longer writing.

''He has problems with his memory. Sometimes I cry because I feel like I'm losing him," he said.

He says the author has stopped writing altogether.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez currently lives in Mexico and has not made many public appearances in recent years.

His novels include Love in the Time of Cholera, Chronicle of a Death Foretold and The General in His Labyrinth.

He is best known for One Hundred Years of Solitude, which has sold more than 30 million copies since 1987 and been translated into more than 30 languages.

It begins with the story of a family unable to care for their senile grandfather.

"It is a disease that runs in the family," said Jaime Garcia Marquez, who is the first family member to speak publicly about the author's illness.