Gabriel García Márquez, Colombia’s most legendary novelist, best known for One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, died in 2014 at the age of 87. Considered one of the 20th century’s most important writers, García Márquez was also a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
10 years after his death, the author’s sons have decided to publish a „lost” novel, which „Gabo” was working on in his final days.
Reportedly, Gabo was suffering from dementia in the last period of his life – but the extent and gravity of the disease remains unclear, as do the conditions under which the manuscript was completed. In any case, Gabo told his sons that this last novel should not be published after his death. But Rodrigo and Gonzalo Barcha have decided to go ahead with publishing the book.
Gabo passed away from acute pneumonia in the midst of a battle with cancer.
Titled Until August, it has been described as „an extraordinary and profound tale of female freedom and desire”.
The novel „follows a woman, Ana Magdalena Bach, who makes an annual sojourn to an island o commemorate her mother’s death anniversary, a journey that becomes an exploration of both freedom and regret, as well as the mysteries of love”.
It will be published in Anne McLean’s English translation by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK, on 12 March 2024.
Until August follows a woman named Ana Magdalena Bach, who visits an island each year on the anniversary of her mother’s death. There, she is able to explore freedom, regret, and the mysteries of love.
However the family later „reconsidered the book’s exceptional qualities, and how much of their father’s genius and colour and love lived within its words”, Viking said. „After long deliberation they made the decision the novel should finally be shared with his millions of devoted readers around the world”.
Of course, this will represent a singular event in March, with the editorial world – and readers around the globe – going rabid. The book will sell out quickly, everyone will devour it.
The manuscript has been locked away with his other papers in an archive at the University of Texas for 10 years. Very few knew of its existence, and those who did believed it would never be released to the public. Still, one wonders why this is marketed as a „lost” novel – a term which seems to deliberately, if not malevolently scrub away the author’s agency. Regardless of how genius an author is, it is unlikely he or she will be satisfied with the idea of publishing a book before being able to check the solidity of its plot, structure, register. Not to mention the enormity of end-of-life struggles – a more nihilistic attitude than what might have previously characterized somebody isn’t difficult to understand. Though I’m no García Marquez, I can speculate what sort of thought process would lead a fellow writer to ultimately go against publishing a book written in either illness or a feeling of untimely rush.
On the other hand, the idea of a beloved genius’s spirit continuing to delight us beyond death is enticing…perhaps, indeed, too enticing to pass up.
