Garcia Marquez Foundation: Dementia Claim Is Fiction

It's quite the plot twist: On the heels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's brother's revelation that the Nobel laureate is suffering from dementia, the Colombian author's foundation says it just isn't so—so stop with the bellyaching. "Please, enough messages of solidarity: Gabo is not insane," tweeted the head of the New Journalism Foundation. "He's just an elderly person who has lost a bit of memory. I assert there is no medical diagnosis of senile dementia."

The 85-year-old's brother, Jaime, took a more fatalistic approach last week, reports the AFP, telling a newspaper that "in our family, we all end up with senile dementia. I am starting to get some of the onset complications and he already is in the throes of it." Garcia Marquez stopped writing in 2004 after battling cancer. (More dementia stories.)