Gabriel Garcia Marquez book worth $60,000 stolen from book fair

This year’s International Book Fair in Bogota, Colombia, was dedicated to favorite son Gabriel Garcia Marquez. To celebrate, one of the exhibitors brought out his first edition, autographed copy of Garcia Marquez’s beloved novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

And that book, thought to be worth $60,000, has disappeared.

The BBC reports that rare bookseller Alvaro Castillo bought the book — the 1967 Spanish-language edition, “Cien años de soledad” — in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 2006. He later had it signed by Garcia Marquez, who wrote, “To Alvaro Castillo, the old-book seller, as yesterday and forever, your friend, Gabo.”

In 1967, Garcia Marquez, a journalist-turned-author, had yet to prove that he could be successful as a novelist. There were only 8,000 copies of “Cien años de soledad” printed, so they are both rare and valuable. Eventually the book, which has been translated into 37 languages, has gone on to sell more than 30 million copies worldwide.

Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. He died in 2014, after publishing about two dozen books, at age 87.

In a press release, the Colombian Literature Chamber said of the theft that they “regret the incident that took place in the Macondo stand dedicated to Garcia Marquez.”

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