Gabriel García Márquez Leaves Behind Manuscript: 5 Things To Know About His Unpublished Work

The literary world saw a great loss when Gabriel García Márquez passed away last week at his Mexico City home after battling cancer for years.

The Colombian author and Nobel laureate, who was affectionately called "Gabo" by his friends, is considered to be the most popular Spanish language author since Miguel de Cervantes in the 17th century. The 87-year-old writer won the Nobel prize in 1982 and is best known for novels, including: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), “Autumn of the Patriarch” (1975), “Love in the Time of Cholera” (1985).

Now, a little after his death, an editor told The Associated Press that the deceased novelist left behind more of his writing in the form of an unpublished manuscript that he chose not to release while he was still living. García Márquez's last published work was released in 2004. Here are four things to know about his last work:

1. According to Cristobal Pera, editorial director of Penguin Random House Mexico, the decision to publish the manuscript posthumously lies in the hands of García Márquez's family. Pera also revealed that which publishing house would get the rights to his work has also not been finalized.

2. The working title of the manuscript is "En Agostos Nos Vemos" which translates to "We'll See Each Other In August."

3. An excerpt of the writing, the opening chapter, has been published in Spain's La Vanguardia newspaper. The premise of the writing is about a trip taken by a 50-some year-old woman to visit her mother's grave. The woman visits the grave, located on a tropical island, every year and has an affair with a man at the hotel in which she stays.

4. Estimates suggest that the manuscript dates back to at least ten years ago, in 2004, when García Márquez was writing his last novel, "Memories of my Melancholy Whores."

5. News of more unpublished work has left many people surprised. "This has come as a surprise to me," said Gerald Martin, a García Márquez biographer. "The last time I talked to Gabo about this story it was a stand-alone which he was going to include in a book with three similar but independent stories. Now they're talking about a series of episodes in which the woman turns up and has a different adventure each year. Obviously it makes sense and presumably Gabo really did play with it, presumably some years ago."