Los Angeles (AFP)

The American writer Larry McMurtry, famous in particular for having co-wrote the screenplay for the film "The Secret of Brokeback Mountain", has died at the age of 84, AFP learned from his agent on Friday.

"Larry McMurtry passed away last night, March 25, from cardiac arrest," said Amanda Lundberg.

The writer "was surrounded by his loved ones with whom he lived, including his longtime writing partner Diana Ossana, his wife Norma Faye and their three dogs," she said in a statement.

His son, folk singer James McMurtry, and grandson were also present alongside the artist, who will be buried in his home state of Texas.

Larry McMurtry had shared in 2006 with Diana Ossana an Oscar for the screenplay of "The Secret of Brokeback Mountain", an adaptation of a short story by Annie Proulx, in which the Texan writer revisited the western, his favorite genre, through the prism of a homosexual love affair between two cowboys.

This new theme had seduced the public and earned the film a huge success in theaters, with the key an Oscar for best director and a nomination in the category of best feature film.

Described as "Flaubert of the Great Plains" by one of its editors, Larry McMurtry has written some thirty novels, including his hit "Lonesome Dove", and over forty screenplays.

His novel "Horseman, Pass By" had revealed this in the early 1960s and had been adapted for cinema under the title "The Wildest Of All" with Paul Newman and Patricia Neal.

The themes of the cowboy and rural America were still present in his novel "The Last Session", which McMurtry had adapted as a screenplay for the film of the same name, directed by Peter Bogdanovich in 1971 and which had already earned him an award nomination. Oscars.

Cinephiles had found him soon after thanks to his novel "Tendres Passions", again adapted for an eponymous film with Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson and Debra Winger, who had received the Oscar for best feature film.

Passionate about books, the writer had opened at the end of the 1980s one of the largest independent bookstores in the United States in the small Texas town of Archer City, where he was born.

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