Gabriel García Márquez was an influential Latin American author known for magical realist epics such as “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “One Hundred Years of Solitude” which follow multiple characters and families over an extended period of time in settings that blend fantasy and reality. Towards the end of his life, he was working intensely on “Until August”, which tells a short, intimate story about a woman in her late 40s who begins seeking freedom and fulfilment through illicit love affairs after nearly 30 years of marriage. He intended to publish this work and sent a draft to his literary agent.
However, when he began to suffer memory loss and dementia towards the end of his life, he decided that his work was insufficiently good to be published and wanted all copies destroyed. He died in 2014.
His sons have contravened his wishes and published the novel.