Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — The family of Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez says the late Colombian novelist's archive was offered only to the University of Texas, which will be the materials' repository.
In the letter dated Nov. 24, but delivered to The Associated Press on Tuesday by a Garcia Marquez assistant in Mexico City, the author's widow, Mercedes, and sons Rodrigo and Gonzalo wrote that his wish and theirs was to divide additional items between his native Colombia and his longtime home Mexico.
The Harry Ransom Center, a literary research archive at the university's campus in Austin, announced Monday that it would receive the archive.
The family explained that it chose the Texas center "because it is one of the places that does this sort of archiving and preservation of documents better than anyone."
"At no time was the archive offered to other centers and at no moment was it auctioned, nor was the highest bidder sought," the letter said.
The Ransom Center already has extensive archives on writers Jorge Luis Borges, William Faulkner and James Joyce. Other Nobel laureates included in its collection are Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.
Monday's announcement had raised eyebrows in Colombia.
"There's some regret that this entire archive we're talking about didn't go to Colombia, but I understand there were private negotiations and we respect those," Sergio Zapata, spokesman with the National Library of Colombia, said after the deal was revealed.
Garcia Marquez's family said some objects would go to the Colombian library, including the typewriter the author used to write "One Hundred Years of Solitude," as well as his Nobel Prize medal and certificate. They said discussions with the national library had been going on for more than a year.
"There will also be other things that we want to leave in Mexico, since it was Gabo's home for 50 years," the family said, without specifying what those items would be. Garcia Marquez was known lovingly as Gabo.
Garcia Marquez, the ultimate exemplar of literature's magic realism, died April 17 at his home in Mexico City. He was 87.
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
