Gabriel Garcia Marquez: First edition novel stolen in Colombia

One Hundred Years of Solitude stolen from locked cabinet at bookfair

(Getty Images)

A first edition copy of late Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's masterpiece “One Hundred Years of Solitude” was stolen at the International Book Fair of Bogota on Sunday.

The copy’s owner Alvaro Castillo Granada the edition was locked in a cabinet during the festival.

Mr Garcia Marquez is celebrated as Colombia's most popular and critically acclaimed author. In 1982, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature 1982 “for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts”.

Following his death in April of last year, first editions of his works have risen in value, and the missing novel has an estimated worth of $60,000 (£40,000). However, Mr Castillo says his signed copy was priceless. The novel featured a written message from the late author: “To Alvaro Castillo, the old-book seller, as yesterday and forever, your friend, Gabo (Garcia Marquez was widely known as Gabo in Latin America).”

Police are currently investigating the book fair’s video footage.