Gabriel Garcia Marquez calls it quits?

Rumors had been swirling in recent months that Gabriel Garcia Marquez would be writing a new novel. Yet those notions have apparently been put to rest by his agent who claimed that the famed Colombian writer will put down his pen for good:

His agent, Carmen Balcells, told the Chilean newspaper La Tercera : "I don't think that García Márquez will write anything else."

Despite longstanding rumours he would never write again, hopes were raised last year when the Colombian writer Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, a friend, said Marquez was in fact working on a new novel.

But Balcell's comments seem to put paid to that, and were supported by García Márquez's biographer, Gerald Martin, who told La Tercera he too doubts anything new will be published in his lifetime.

"I also believe that Gabo won't write any more books, but I don't think this is too regrettable, because as a writer it was his destiny to have the immense satisfaction of having a totally coherent literary career many years before the end of his natural life," said Martin.

“Gabo” hasn’t written anything since the 2004 publication of his most recent novel- “Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores”. Reviews of that book were mixed though the harshest critique came from the Iranian government which banned the text.

Not all is dour news in the world of “Gabo”; Salma Hayek is rumored to play the lead role in the upcoming film adaptation of "News of a Kidnapping".

Image- The Telegraph
Online Sources- Guardian UK, metacritic.com, Xinhua, The Latin Americanist