A signed first edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude has been stolen in Colombia.
The book was being exhibited in a locked cabinet at the International Book Fair in Bogota.
The fair, which closes on May 4, is dedicated to Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who died last year at the age of 87.
The book is estimated to be worth $60,000 but its owner says for him its value is immeasurable.
It disappeared on Saturday afternoon from a locked cabinet at the Corferias exhibition centre in Bogota where it was being exhibited as part of the book fair.
The fair, one of the most important in Latin America, had at its theme Macondo, the fictional Colombian town where One Hundred Years of Solitude is set.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, was Colombia’s most famous and critically acclaimed author.
Following his death in Mexico in April 2014, first editions of his novels have risen in value.
Alvaro Castillo, who trades in rare books, said he purchased the 1967 first edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude in a bookshop in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo, in 2006.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez later signed the copy and dedicated it to Alvaro Castillo with the words: “To Alvaro Castillo, the old-book seller, as yesterday and forever, your friend, Gabo.”
Alvaro Castillo would not say how much he paid for the copy or how much more it would be worth with the dedication, but stressed that to him it was priceless.
Police are reviewing video footage from the exhibition centre in the hope of discovering who may be behind the theft.
