A decade after the death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a previously unreleased novel by the iconic author is set to hit the shelves. The Colombian Nobel laureate, renowned for his contributions to the Latin American “magical realism” genre, had penned the 120-page novel, “Until August,” in 2004.
The book’s release, announced by publisher Penguin Random House, is scheduled for Wednesday in Spanish, coinciding with Garcia Marquez’s birthday, and on March 12 in English.
Before his death in 2014, Garcia Marquez had expressed his wish for the novel to be destroyed, deeming it useless. However, his sons, Gonzalo and Rodrigo Garcia Barcha, and literary agents reviewed the manuscripts and found them to possess literary significance that the author might not have recognized in his final years, marked by memory loss.
Gonzalo Garcia Barcha, referring to his father affectionately as ‘Gabo,’ stated at a news conference, “For me it means that all of Gabo’s work has been published, that nothing is still pending and that in that sense he has closed a cycle.”
Best known for his novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” which played a pivotal role in earning him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, Garcia Marquez’s new book, “Until August,” is set for global release in nearly 30 countries. The novel revolves around a woman named Ana Magdalena Bach, who embarks on an annual pilgrimage to a Caribbean island every August to pay her respects at her mother’s grave.
Despite being left unfinished by Gabo, his family believes the book retains the author’s distinctive and exquisite prose, as well as his profound understanding of the human experience.
Upon García Márquez’s passing in 2014, various drafts, notes, and chapter fragments of the novel remained tucked away in his archives at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. There, the story lay dormant, spanning 769 pages, largely overlooked and forgotten—until Garcia Marquez’s sons made the bold decision to defy their father’s wishes.
The novel serves as an unforeseen epilogue to the legacy of García Márquez, a towering figure in literature and a Nobel laureate. Its publication is expected to spark discussions about the ethical dilemmas faced by literary estates and publishers when considering posthumous releases that diverge from an author’s explicit instructions.
Indeed, literary history is replete with instances where famous works came into existence despite the expressed wishes of the authors. Virgil, Kafka, and Nabokov are among those who left behind instructions for their works to be destroyed, only for their wishes to be disregarded posthumously.
These examples raise profound questions about the responsibilities of literary executors and heirs in preserving and disseminating an author’s work after their death.
In their quest to construct the most coherent version of “Until August,” Pera and the Garcia Barcha brothers adhered to a stringent rule: they would not introduce a single word that did not originate from García Márquez’s notes or different versions, they confirmed.
As for the fate of any other unpublished works by García Márquez, his sons assert that it’s a non-issue: there simply aren’t any. Throughout his life, García Márquez routinely disposed of older versions of published books and incomplete manuscripts, as he did not want them subjected to scrutiny later on.
This was one of the reasons they chose to publish “Until August,” they explained. “When this book is released, we’ll have all of Gabo’s work published,” García Barcha said. “There is nothing else in the drawer.” This statement underscores the finality of García Márquez’s literary legacy, marking the end of an era for the world of magical realism. The release of “Until August” is not just a posthumous publication, but a testament to the enduring impact of García Márquez’s work. It serves as a reminder that even in his absence, his words continue to resonate, enchant, and inspire readers around the globe.
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