2014 Saw the loss of several Nobel, Booker Prize and Pulitzer winners, as well as the passing of some of the most beloved authors in the English language.

Nadine Gordimer 

Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer and activist whose works took on racially-charged themes, especially apartheid in her home country. Her famous novels include 1974’s The Conservationist, 1979’s Burger’s Daughter, 1981’s July’s People, and 1987’s A Sport of Nature. She also wrote numerous collections of short fiction and essays. Gordimer received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991.

 Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Nobel winner Marquez died from pneumonia at the age of 87 after years of declining health, which included being diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1999. García Márquez started as a journalist, and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967),