Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s sons publish unfinished novel that the late author wanted ‘destroyed’

By Pau Mosquera and Oscar Holland, CNN

(CNN) — Gabriel García Márquez’s last novel, “Memories of My Melancholy Whores,” was published 20 years ago, but the late Colombian author’s legacy did not end there.

After his death in 2014, an unfinished work — consisting of up to five drafts that the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature was working on during the last years of his life — remained in storage at his personal archive at the University of Texas.

On Wednesday, the day García Márquez would have turned 97, the now-finished novel, “Until August,” was published by the author’s sons Rodrigo and Gonzalo García.

But, as the pair acknowledge in the book’s preamble, García Márquez didn’t want the work to be released. “This book doesn’t work,” they recall their father telling them before his death. “It must be destroyed.”

Having reviewed the manuscripts, his family determined that they contained the essence of the writer who has captivated so many readers for decades. In the book, García Márquez’s sons admit that publishing it was an act of “betrayal.” But Gonzalo told a press conference Tuesday that nothing had been added that was not included in the various drafts of the novel left by his father.

“The novel was a little scattered in a certain number of originals, but it was complete,” he said, as the brothers presented the book at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid.

“It is not as polished as his greatest books,” Rodrigo added: “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.”

García Márquez worked on the novel for several years until he began to suffer from dementia. The Colombian author’s memory loss undermined his confidence in his work, his sons said.

“He never kept unpublished books,” said Rodrigo. “Every book that he did not finish and that he was not satisfied with was destroyed. So, the fact that he did not destroy this book, I think, is also a sign that it became a little indecipherable for him. A Gabo (as García Márquez was affectionately known) completely in his right mind would have either finished the book, or destroyed it.”

Set in an unidentified Caribbean location, “Until August” follows protagonist Ana Magdalena Bach as she makes an annual trip to the island where her mother is buried. Each year, while there, she “for one night takes a new lover,” according to a synopsis from the book’s publisher Penguin Random House, which described the novel as a “profound meditation on freedom, regret, self-transformation, and the mysteries of love.”

The posthumous novel emerged from the manuscripts thanks to the fine-tuning of publisher and literary agent Cristóbal Pera, who edited the last two books García Márquez published during his lifetime.

García Márquez’s sons have confirmed that there are no other unfinished novels in storage. “All of Gabo’s work is now available to his readers,” said Gonzalo.

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CNN’s Michael Rios contributed to this report.