Gabriel García Márquez: His children publish the last novel that the late author wanted to destroy

When Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez died a decade ago, he left behind a novel he had written while battling dementia.

In his final days, he told his children that the book must be destroyed.

However, they defied their father and, in what they called an act of “betrayal,” they published the book.

As of August it has received mixed reviews, with The Guardian’s reviewer describing it as a “sketch, as blurry and flawed as sketches usually are.”

He said the 100-page book “is like a faded souvenir, worn but treasured for its associations with the fabulous imaginary world that Márquez conjured in his prime.”

The Colombian writer, who died in 2014, was best known for pioneering the magical realism writing style.

He wrote books such as Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude, which have sold more than 50 million copies worldwide.

Justifying his decision to publish, García Márquez’s son Gonzalo told BBC Radio 4’s Front Row that in the end, the author “was not in a position to judge his work as he could only see the flaws but not the interesting things that was there”. .

After recently rereading the text, Gonzalo said that he did not “find it as disastrous as Gabo had judged it” and that it was a valuable addition to his work because it showed him a new facet and was “unique.”

“We were definitely not going to destroy it,” he said. “In 2022, we took one of the versions and read it, and there really wasn’t much discussion about it.

“We realized that the book was complete, we realized that we didn’t have to edit much. There are no additions, there are no big changes. So there really wasn’t any discussion there.

“We thought about it for about three seconds: was it a betrayal of my parents, of my father’s (wishes)?

“And we decided that yes, it was a betrayal. But that’s what children are for.”

He said it would eventually be published, so the family wanted to publish a version that they approved of and that protected their copyright.

The novel centers on a middle-aged woman who travels alone to an island each summer to visit her mother’s grave, and during each trip she takes a new lover despite being happily married.

It is the first time that García Márquez focuses on a female protagonist.

“Usually, in a review of a disappointing posthumous publication or a minor work by an important author, it is worth saying that, despite its flaws, it will delight its devoted fans.

“I don’t think that was true until August. Márquez knew it and he was right in not wanting it to see the light,” he continued.

However, he added that the “novel has qualities” and “is set in a world that achieves an evocative balance between the real and the dreamlike.”

“It is as if the book contained both Márquez the elder and Márquez the younger, with the insight and weary good humor of old age conveyed in the inquisitive, hesitant manner of the apprentice,” he wrote.

He noted, however, that “the novel is stripped of the endless, inventive discussions of folktales, backstories, and verbal verve that characterize Márquez at his best.”

“Until August he does nothing to enlarge Gabo’s legend; he does nothing to diminish it,” he concluded.

In addition to a new book, Márquez’s 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude is being adapted into a Spanish-language Netflix series.

According to the New York Times, Márquez received many offers over the years to adapt his book into a film, but he turned them down because he wanted it only to be made in Spanish.

García Márquez’s book is not the first novel to be published posthumously against the authors’ wishes.

Hear more from Gonzalo García Barcha on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row from 19:15 GMT on Wednesday 6 March, and then in BBC sounds.

Until August it will be published in the United Kingdom on Tuesday, March 12.