HE IS the 82-year old giant of Latin American literature who pioneered the school of magical realism and inspired a generation of novelists.
But now fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez – who has barely written a word since his last novel, Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores, five years ago – are facing the prospect that after a career spanning half a century the Colombian author has finally laid down his pen.
His agent, Carmen Balcells, told the Chilean newspaper La Tercera: “I don’t think that Garcia Marquez will write anything else.” Despite longstanding rumours he would never write again, hopes were raised last year when the Colombian writer Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, a friend, said Marquez was working on a new novel.
But Balcell’s comments seem to put paid to that, and were supported by Garcia Marquez’s biographer, Gerald Martin, who told La Tercera he too doubts anything new will be published in his lifetime.
“I also believe that Gabo won’t write any more books, but I don’t think this is too regrettable, because as a writer it was his destiny to have the immense satisfaction of having a totally coherent literary career many years before the end of his natural life,” said Martin.
Garcia Marquez has in the past talked openly of the strain placed on him by his literary career. Last December he told fans at Mexico’s Guadalajara book fair that he was worn out by writing: “It’s a lot of work for me to write books.”
Garcia Marquez is best known for One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, and News of a Kidnapping.
He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1982. – ( Guardianservice)