Posthumous publication: Honoring an author’s wishes or literary grave robbing?

Published April 4, 2024 9:00pm ET



Last month, the Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez published his seventh novel, Until August. (The pedantic might suggest that at a slim 110 pages in suspiciously large type, it is more accurately described as a novella, but never mind.) There would be nothing especially remarkable about this, save that Márquez died almost exactly a decade ago, and Until August has been mired in controversy ever since his publisher Knopf Doubleday announced its posthumous publication. Márquez wrote the book while he was succumbing to dementia but retained enough self-awareness to say to his sons Rodrigo, himself an acclaimed writer and director, and Gonzalo, “This book doesn’t work. It must be destroyed.” 

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