DarÌo Arizmendi, head of news at Radio Caracol in Colombia, said the novel would appear before the end of the year. He said: "I had the fortune to spend last weekend in Mexico with the writer and I can assure you that he is putting the final touches to his new novel."

As yet the 250-page work lacked a title, but Márquez was leaving that until the end. "He wrote a first draft which he didn't like, then another, then another; then, with the fifth draft, it was ready," said Arizmendi.
In 2006 Márquez said he had finished with writing: "Last year was the first in my life in which I haven't written even a line. With my experience, I could write a new novel without any problems, but people would realise my heart wasn't in it."

Often described as the father of magical realism (a school of Latin American writing which combined the real with the fantastic), Márquez is best known for One Hundred Years of Solitude, for which he won the Nobel for literature in 1982, Love in the Time of Cholera, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and News of a Kidnapping.

Márquez is now aged 81. He kept fans waiting 10 years for his last novel, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, in 2004 — about a 90-year-old man who wants to celebrate his birthday by taking a teenage girl's virginity.