What we know about Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s latest book

What we know about Gabriel Garcia Marquez's latest book

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Today, a posthumous novel by one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, Gabriel García Márquez, is being published. The Colombian’s previous work, “Remembering My Sad Whores,” was published in 2004. The new book “See You in August” will be published almost 10 years after the writer’s death. Today he would have turned 97. The novel will be released simultaneously in 40 languages, including Russian, Bookmate reports. And this is already being called the global publishing and literary event of the year. But the writer himself opposed the publication of the work, and its publication became possible thanks to the broken word. The topic will be continued by Grigory Kolganov.

The main character of Márquez’s latest book is a 50-year-old woman named Anna Magdalena Bach. She has a husband and children. But every year she goes on a trip to a certain island and takes a lover for one night. Traditionally, the theme of loneliness is central to the Colombian classic. However, this novella is not like the writer’s world-famous bestsellers. But his fans will find what they love in it, says Daria Sinitsyna, translator of the novel “See You in August” into Russian:

“This is a fairly small novel, it is not like the large works of García Márquez. A good, touching story about a woman’s life, in which fans of the writer, such as myself, for example, will find something they love. But still, we are clearly dealing with not his best text, which cannot be compared either with “One Hundred Years of Solitude” or with other great novels, but it is much better than the last work of his lifetime. There is García Márquez’s own style and images, but not in such concentration as in “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, or in “Love in the Time of Plague”, or in “The Autumn of the Patriarch”.

Gabriel García Márquez decided during his lifetime that this novel should not be published. Not out of whim – he suffered from dementia for the last 10 years of his life, and considered the book useless, and also unfinished. It was supposed to be only the first in a cycle of five short stories. After the death of the classic, all his manuscripts ended up in the archives of the University of Texas – away from the public.

Rumors that “See You in August” is gathering dust somewhere there have been circulating since the end of the 20th century and were confirmed about 10 years ago. The writer’s eldest son, Rodrigo Garcia, after reading the work, said that it was not a disordered text. The 110-page novella just isn’t as polished as Marquez’s other works. Therefore, the heirs dared to violate their father’s dying will and publish the last novel, refusing even to correct the contradictions that the translators pointed out.

Doesn’t this dramatic preamble sound like a marketing ploy? Here everyone decides for himself, answers the director of the fiction department of the AST publishing house, Sergei Rubis: “Advertising, not advertising, is a given. The novel is published all over the world, and then the reader will evaluate whether this new work of Marquez is better or worse than others. But in any case, there is a text, and its authenticity is obvious. We just have to read it and some will enjoy it, and some may be disappointed, but in any case, this is another new unpublished work of García Márquez, and this is truly an event in the literary world.”

One Hundred Years of Solitude, probably Márquez’s most popular book, sold 50 million copies. Income from its sales does not appear anywhere. But his children receive royalties and own the rights to the writer’s works. They will also become producers of a series based on this bestseller; Netflix promises to release a film adaptation in 2024.

Márquez is the first Colombian to win the Nobel Prize. But, as residents of the Latin American country told Kommersant FM, the release of his posthumous book did not cause much excitement. The local media only discussed the question of whether the novel was written with neural networks? BLU radio correspondent Nestor Morales believes that this is unlikely: “I don’t think they decided to do this. I believe that work will be carried out with experts. And in any case, if neural networks were connected, they will tell us about it. But this is not some completely unknown work by García Márquez, it was simply kept in his archives for a long time, and now it will be published.”

No one has yet undertaken to estimate the income from the publication of Marquez’s latest novel and the film adaptation of his bestseller. But it seems that they should be enough for 100 years of comfortable existence, not even alone.


Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.

Ekaterina Vikhareva

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