Pablo Neruda was born on July 12, 1904 and died in September 23, 1973 at age 69. Neruda became known as a poet while still a teenager. He wrote in a variety of styles including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and erotically-charged love poems. The Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language." Harold Bloom included Neruda as one of the 26 writers central to the Western tradition in his book The Western Canon. On July 15, 1945, at Pacembu Stadium in Sao Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people in honor of the Communist revolutionary leader Luis Carlos Prestes. On 23 September 1973, Neruda died of prostate cancer in his house in 'Isla Negra'.