Fears that Colombia’s Nobel prizewinning author, Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez, had put down his pen forever were allayed today when a close friend confirmed that the master of magical realism was working on a new novel.
GarcÃa Márquez’s next book will be a love story, though his friend and fellow writer Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza said today that the author was struggling to come up with a version that he was happy with.
“He has four versions of it,” Apuleyo said. “He told me that he was now trying to get the best from each of them.”
Apuleyo, who co-wrote a book of conversations with GarcÃa Márquez called The Smell of the Guava Tree in 1982, said the Nobel prizewinner had become hugely self-critical and demanding of himself.
Two years ago, GarcÃa Márquez, now 81, declared that he had laid his pen down. “I’ve stopped writing,” he said. “2005 was the first year in my life that I didn’t write a line.”
He admitted, though, that his problem was one of enthusiasm rather than inspiration. “With all the practice I’ve got, I’d have no problems writing a new novel,” he explained. “But people notice if you haven’t put your heart into it.”
Apuleyo said GarcÃa Márquez described his year without writing as “a sabbatical”, during which he had devoted his time to reading.
Rumours that the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude was close to finishing a new novel began circulating earlier this year.
The Carmen Balcells literary agency, which represents him, said today the author had not yet set a publication date for any new novel. “There is nothing, for the moment,” a spokeswoman said.
GarcÃa Márquez’s last novel, Memories of my Melancholy Whores, was published in 2004. He is also said to be preparing a second volume of memoirs to follow Living to Tell the Tale, published in 2002.
—- Giles Tremlett / The GuardianÂ