Until August

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

From Shelf: Jessie Thompson picks her unmissable 2024 fiction.

THE EXTRAORDINARY LOST NOVEL FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA AND ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDEA TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Sitting alone, overlooking the still and blue lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach surveys the men of the hotel bar. She is happily married and has no reason to escape the world she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover.Amid sultry days and tropical downpours, lotharios and conmen, Ana journeys further each year into the hinterland of her desire, and the fear that sits quietly at her heart.Constantly surprising and wonderfully sensual, Until August is a profound meditation on freedom, regret, and the mysteries of love, from one of the greatest writers the world has ever known.'The master of magic realism's slim and inventive last novel is a tale of forbidden love in later life. I read it straight through in one sitting, then got up the next day and did it again' The Times 'No writer since Dickens was so widely read, and so deeply loved, as Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Salman Rushdie'One of the greatest visionary writers - and one of my favourites from the time I was young' Barack Obama'Few writers can be said to have written books that have changed the whole course of literature. Gabriel Garcia Marquez did just that' Guardian'A novel both sexy and disturbing... The lasting impression of Until August is one of deep feeling, astutely observed and beautifully conveyed' Telegraph