Outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev awarded the prestigious Order of Honor to Columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez on Tuesday, as the Nobel Prize winner celebrated his 85th birthday, the Kremlin said, Noyan Tapan reports quoting Ria Novosti. The novelist was given the award for strengthening friendship between Russia and Latin America, the statement said. Garcia Marquez's most celebrated novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, is also being published on Tuesday in electronic form for the first time. The book has already sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. In a telegram to the cancer-stricken writer, President Medvedev said his works "reflected the traditions and culture of the entire continent" and praised Garcia Marquez's "active civic position." Garcia Marquez is also renowned for other novels such as Love in the Time of Cholera and Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

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