Until August

A Novel

By: Gabriel García Márquez, Anne McLean - translator

Narrated by: Catalina Sandino Moreno, Cristobal Pera, Rodrigo Garcia

Length: 2 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The extraordinary rediscovered novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude—a moving tale of female desire and abandon

Sitting alone beside the languorous blue waters of the lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach contemplates the men at the hotel bar. She has been happily married for twenty-seven years and has no reason to escape the life she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels by ferry here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover.

Across sultry Caribbean evenings full of salsa and boleros, lotharios and conmen, Ana journeys further each year into the hinterland of her desire and the fear hidden in her heart.

Constantly surprising, joyously sensual, Until August is a profound meditation on freedom, regret, self-transformation, and the mysteries of love—an unexpected gift from one of the greatest writers the world has ever known.

©2024 Gabriel García Márquez (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Contains enough tenderness and beauty to recommend it to García Márquez’s many fans.” —Wall Street Journal

“Far more than a coda to a magnificent career . . . Anne McLean’s marvelous rendering of García Márquez’s posthumous Until August continues the tradition, immersing us in the dreamy richness of the author’s fictional worlds, amid characters pummeled by the demands of marriage, family and the dead . . . McLean’s nuanced translation harkens back to the maestro’s canonical novels while evoking, in a composition as tight as a Rembrandt portrait, the ache of human need.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“García Márquez should be read because he is so influential a writer, one who remodelled his country’s perception of itself and reshaped its literature and that of the wider world . . . Yet more than this, unlike so many other ‘great writers,’ his books are enjoyable. Inventive storytelling comes with indelible characters and arresting images served up with episodes of sharp psychological acuity . . . Love—ecstatic, forbidden, transgressive and especially between older people—is one of his great subjects . . . Until August is inventively enjoyable and working to its surprising, pleasing ending. I read it straight through in one sitting, then got up the next day and did it again.” —The Times (London)

An Adventure

The unexpected..
Courageous, bold and imagination. Glad the book was written and published. A great story teller. Worth the read Read the book with an open mind and heart.
Thank you family for perhaps doing the unexpected.

Candid and Untamed

Only a writer with a deep understanding of the human soul and words like Marquez could write such a candid, untamed, original, and surprising story like "Until August".
That said, the narration is a total disaster, strange pauses, weird cadence, and a totally deflated interpretation.
I imagine that her Spanish version is better, she is a very good actress.
The publisher should have considered finding a narrator who is more familiar with the language to enhance the authenticity and engagement of the performance.
I can't believe that a great native speaker actress, was not chosen to read the English version of the final story of this great master.
I'll have to buy the book.

The originality of the story.

I liked the raw honesty of the main
character. How a small encounter can turn into a unique experience. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

Gabo's Last Work

Here it is, at last: Gabo's last work.

While it is not the lush, dense word forest of 100 Years of Solitude, it is the final story of a brilliant writer. Let us all cherish it.

And remember, many years before, when we were first introduced to Marquez's magical world of imagination and art.....