This March 6, In August See You, a posthumous novel by the Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Gabriel García Márquez, will be published by the Penguin Random House publishing house. The journalist, also a member of the Latin American Boom of the 1960s, was one of the most renowned writers of the last century.
He had a life dedicated to letters. In his bibliography there are a dozen novels and a long list of journalistic works that continue to be applauded to this day.
In 1999, the Colombian was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, for which he received treatment and improved for years to come. In 2012, however, his brother Jaime García Márquez held in a meeting in the Museum of the Inquisition in Cartagena de Indias, that the chemotherapy received caused the author to develop senile dementia, a disease present in his genealogy.
The text In August See You was written during that period, and thus he made it known British-American author Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses) during the opening of the 2023 edition of the Kosmopolis festival. “I am very concerned that the publication of the manuscript has been authorized, which may not do it justice,” he said.
In the case of García Márquez – who finally died in 2014 – it was his family that authorized the editing and publication of this novel, and the same has happened with other authors throughout history. He also spent time with the Nobel Prize winner in Chilean Literature, Gabriela Mistral; After her death, Doris Dana compiled and edited what now makes up Poema de Chile.
In a similar vein, Roberto Bolaño wanted to publish the texts of 2666 as five independent stories; However, his children decided to publish them as a single volume. And in a more complex fact, there is the work of Franz Kafka, which is almost entirely known due to posthumous publications. In some cases the writers themselves leave instructions on his manuscript, as happened with Pedro Lemebel and My friend Gladys, a compilation that he was in charge of before his death in 2015.
From these situations, questions arise regarding posthumous publication, when on many occasions the wishes regarding the future of certain writings are not known. Why does what at some point was discarded by the author himself, after his death appear as a work worth knowing, especially if it was conceived in difficult health conditions?
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“García Márquez could have published whatever he wanted, so it seems to me that we should reflect a little on that gesture. There is an intention to recover, of a work that perhaps was not intended to be published, but that may have good notes there or comments in the edition itself, with good curatorial work,” comments Gabriela Alburquenque, writer and founder of Origami Magazine.
Thinking about the next book by the Colombian author, Matías Rivas, editor and critic, argues: “I wouldn’t pay any attention to him (Rushdie). I think people are able to distinguish perfectly between the books that the author allowed to be published, those that he left behind, and those that remain as a record. Much of literature is composed of posthumous books, and in the case of García Márquez, no one is demanding anything from him, because he is a genius of literature in Spanish, but there is a certain curiosity.
Gerardo Jara, bookseller The restless, for his part, adds: “If we want to think about ethics, there are two options: not reading the work or, from a more respectful place, understanding it as something that is not finite. I believe that posthumous works are unfinished books or books that were not intended to be read. As readers we are curious, but we have to read them from that perspective.”
There are authors who have expressed their opinions on the subject, and this is what Alburquenque notes: “I find it interesting to think about how we honor our dead in literature. Conrado Zuluaga, an expert on García Márquez, appealed to a response that the same author left in One Hundred Years of Solitude, in a passage where Colonel Aureliano Buendía asks that a trunk with his verses be burned. Elena Poniatowska, on the other hand, talks about this as an action by children to preserve their memory, so it is undoubtedly a debate with few answers.”
Publication is scheduled for March 6 of this year, and the date is no coincidence. That day, but in 1927, Gabriel García Márquez was born, so the work comes as a commemoration almost ten years after his death.
In the prologue of the work, words from the family appear, alluding to the decision to launch this novel: “It has many and very enjoyable merits and nothing that prevents us from enjoying the most outstanding thing about Gabo’s work: his capacity for invention, the poetry of language, the captivating narrative, his understanding of human beings and his affection for their experiences and misfortunes, especially in love.”
In that sense, Maribel Luque, director of the Balcells Agency, expressed in a statement: “(See you in August) is an exploration of femininity, sexuality and desire, absolutely captivating and modern. “A magnificent finishing touch to the author’s legacy.”
2024-02-16 23:00:21
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