García Márquez is writing new novel, says friend

Fears that Colombia's Nobel prizewinning author, Gabriel García Márquez, had put down his pen forever were allayed today when a close friend confirmed that the master of magical realism was working on a new novel.

García Márquez's next book will be a love story, though his friend and fellow writer Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza said today that the author was struggling to come up with a version that he was happy with.

"He has four versions of it," Apuleyo said. "He told me that he was now trying to get the best from each of them."

Apuleyo, who co-wrote a book of conversations with García Márquez called The Smell of the Guava Tree in 1982, said the Nobel prizewinner had become hugely self-critical and demanding of himself.

Two years ago, García Márquez, now 81, declared that he had laid his pen down. "I've stopped writing," he said. "2005 was the first year in my life that I didn't write a line."...