It was a Maundy Thursday when the Nobel Prize-winning author’s heart stopped beating forever. The family had gathered at their home in Caye Fuego south of Mexico City. A granddaughter left some yellow roses, which were his favorite flowers, in the dead man’s belly. With some hesitation – most journalists had already disappeared for the Easter holidays – the news began to travel around the world: Gabriel García Márquez is dead.

10 years ago, on April 17, 2014, the Colombian writer breathed his last at the age of 87. On that day, a novelist was lost, like no other, not even in the vast Spanish-speaking world. With works such as “One Hundred Years of Solitude” “Gambo” put his continent on the world literary map, defining the image of Latin America for generations.

In 1982 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. On the tenth anniversary of his death, a short novel from his remains is now being published – alongside a book of memoirs by his son, Rodrigo Marquez, 64, in which the latter recounts the life and death of his father and of his mother, Mercedes Barca.

The author wanted the text destroyed

The novel entitled “See you in August” was released today Thursday (March 7) in German by the publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch – in April it will also be published in Greek by Psychogios publications. The text is more of a novella and the author initially didn’t even want it to be printed – because he didn’t think it was worth it. Rodrigo and his younger brother Gonzalo, the Marquez’s two children, ultimately took a different view – and hope their father will forgive them from the other world.

The existence of the text has been known for years. After the author’s death it was given with the rest of his remains to the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas. Already in 1999 “Gambo” had read a chapter of the book at Casa América in Madrid. The audience, which included the former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and the later head of government Mariano Rajoy, held their breath, as the Madrid newspaper “El País” wrote. In 2003 “El País” printed another chapter of the text. Marquez changed the text again and again, never releasing it, preferring it to be destroyed.

The plot is briefly as follows: every year on August 16, Ana Magdalena Bach, the protagonist of the book, goes by ship to a Caribbean island to visit her mother’s grave. On the day of her death, she leaves a bouquet of gladioli there and tells the deceased about her pain and worries. She is 46 years old and for 27 years she has lived happily with her husband, who is the first and only man in her life – until the day she flirts with a complete stranger at the cheap hotel by the lagoon and brings him to her room. Since then, every year she has a different adventure on the island and now she feels almost a stranger in her familiar world.

The touching memories of the son

It’s a fun story with some steamy sex scenes – and a successful ending. The master of magical realism probably did not choose the last name of his protagonist by chance, because it is also about music, about Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” performed by Bolero, about Brahms, Mozart and Schubert. The text itself is less melodic, in some places it even seems a little strange in German. Quotes so beautifully written that it’s worth noting the page numbers on the back cover, you probably won’t find.

In his memoirs, published today for the first time, Rodrigo Garcia writes how much his father suffered from dementia in the last years of his life. How moving his funeral was, which lasted three days, during which the urn lay on his desk wrapped in a yellow silk handkerchief. “Aquí nadie llora” – Here we don’t cry – ordered his mother. Someone noticed that one of Márquez’s characters – Ursula Iguarán from “One Hundred Years of Solitude” – also died on Maundy Thursday. And, as often happens in a novel, at the time of his death there was also a dead bird there, which had probably hit some glass.

It’s descriptions like these that make Rodrigo Marquez’s book so worth reading. Between the Rio Grande and Tierra del Fuego his father was something of a pop star. When he entered a restaurant in Mexico City, everyone present spontaneously began to applaud. In California, on the other hand, García Márquez could dine undetected in Los Angeles’ upscale restaurants. He was often recognized only by the Latino valets, who sometimes sent someone to buy a book of his on the spot for the meter to sign after his dinner. “This always gave him the greatest pleasure,” writes his son.

Edited by: Giorgos Passas