Bangladesh's most popular novelist and fiction writer Humayun Ahmed has died at a New York hospital after battling against colon cancer for nine months. He was 64.

He wrote over 200 fictions and non-fictions books. His almost all of the books became bestsellers and translated into English, Japanese and Russian and other foreign languages.

The death of the academic-turned-writer came days after doctors in the US carried out a surgery when he was believed to be out of danger but the disease return quickly visibly baffling the physicians.

Ahmed, who was a professor of chemistry in the premier Dhaka University, flew to the US last September after being diagnosed with cancer and received chemotherapy at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and a subsequent surgery on June 21 but the doctors found an unknown virus in his body and were unable to treat him.

President Zillur Rahman, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and main opposition BNP chief Khaleda Zia mourned Ahmed's demise saying the death was an "irreparable loss" for the nation.

His family said the body was expected to return home on Sunday but they were yet to chalk up the burial plan or where Ahmed, also the country's leading filmmaker and playwright, would be laid to eternal rest.

He won every top award for writing in Bangladesh in a career that also saw him make half a dozen hit films, such as Aguner Poroshmoni (The Touchstone of Fire) and Srabon Megher Din (Monsoon Days).

Ahmed shot to fame after he wrote his first novel 'Nondito Noroke' (In Blissful Hell) while still a student at the Dhaka University.