A previously unpublished book written by famous Columbian writer Gabriel García Márquez has recently found its way to bookstores. The book, titled Agosto Nos Vemos and translated to English as Until August, was published by Márquez’s sons despite the author’s wish to have it destroyed.
Márquez, who passed away in 2014, believed that the book “doesn’t work” and didn’t want to share it with the world. The manuscript for the book was part of the Gabriel García Márquez papers acquired by The University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center.
After reading the book in 2022 and finding it complete, Márquez’s sons Rodrigo and Gonzalo García decided the rest of the world should be introduced to it as well.
“It is not as polished as his greatest books,” Rodrigo said via CNN. “But, as we say in the prologue, it definitely has many of (his) outstanding characteristics: beautiful prose, knowledge of the human being, power of description … We decided, yes, it was a betrayal. But that’s what children are for.”
Rodrigo and Gonzalo added that Until August was the only unpublished manuscript by Márquez found in his papers and that “all of his work is now available to his readers.”
Until August tells the story about a woman named Ana Magdalena Bach who travels every year to an unnamed Caribbean island where her mother is buried “and for one night takes a new lover.”
“Across sultry Caribbean evenings full of salsa and boleros, lotharios and conmen, Ana journeys further each year into the hinterland of her desire and the fear hidden in her heart,” it says in the synopsis shared by the publisher Penguin Random House.