TEHRAN-The Persian translation of the Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez’s last novel “Until August”  has recently been published. 

Lega Press in Tehran has brought out the book with a translation by Majdeddin Mahmoodi Arsanjani, Mehr reported.

It was originally published posthumously on March 6, 2024, on the 97th birth anniversary of the renowned writer.

“Until August” was basically planned to be a collection of four stories. García Márquez had worked on the novel at least since 1997. However, he put aside work on other stories. He never completed the novel. Towards the end of his life, he began to suffer from dementia. Due to his memory issues, he could no longer follow the plot of the novel, and therefore could not complete it. 

The manuscript of the novel was placed in an archive at Ransom Center after García Márquez's death. Originally, his family decided not to publish the incomplete novel. However, in 2022, his sons re-read the drafts of the novel, of which there were five. Although García Márquez had requested that his sons ensure the destruction of the novel, they found literary worth in the novel and chose to edit and release it.
 
The novel tells the story of Ana Magdalena Bach, who has been happily married for twenty-seven years and has no reason to escape the life she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels by ferry to the island where her mother is buried, and every time takes a new lover.

Across sultry Caribbean evenings full of salsa and boleros, lotharios, and conmen, Ana journeys further each year into the hinterland of her desire and the fear hidden in her heart.

It is the only novel on a female protagonist by the Nobel Prize-winning author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (1967) and “Love in the Time of Cholera” (1985).

Gabriel García Márquez was a novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist. Known as “Gabo” in his native country, he was considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. 

He wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories but is best known for his novels. His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magical realism, which uses magical elements and events to explain real experiences. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo, and most of them express the theme of solitude.

SS/SAB