‘I have not stopped writing’

Nobel literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez has denied reports that he had stopped writing, Colombia’s El Tiempo newspaper reported.

The newspaper reported Sunday that it asked the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude if it was true that he would not write again, as his literary agent, Carmen Balcells, had recently told the Chilean daily La Tercera.

"Not only is it not true, but the only true thing is that I do nothing else but write," Garcia Marquez told El Tiempo by telephone from his home in Mexico, responding to the first of two questions he agreed to answer.

In response to a question about whether he "will publish more books", the author said his "trade is not to publish, but to write".

"I will know when the cakes I am baking are ready to eat", Garcia Marquez said.

The 82-year-old writer has not published a book since 2004, when Memoria de mis putas tristes (Memories of My Melancholy Whores) came out.

"I believe Garcia Marquez is not going to write again," Balcells told La Tercera last week, raising concerns among the Colombian writer’s fans.

Gerald Martin, author of the only authorised biography of the Colombian novelist, said he too believed that Garcia Marquez "will not write more books".

— By arrangement with The Independent

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