London, Dec. 10: Colombia’s Nobel prize winning author, Gabriel García Márquez, is working on a new novel, according to reports.

The new book by 82-year-old master of magical realism will be a love story, his friend and fellow writer Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza said. However, the author is struggling to come up with a version he was happy with, the Guardian reports.

“He has four versions of it,” Apuleyo said. “He told me that he was now trying to get the best from each of them.”

Apuleyo, who co-wrote a book of conversations with García Márquez called The Smell of the Guava Tree in 1982, said the Nobel prize winner had become hugely self-critical.

But news that he is writing again will come as a relief to fans, who were concerned when the author announced in 2006: “I’ve stopped writing ... 2005 was the first year in my life that I didn’t write a line.”

García Márquez blamed a lack of enthusiasm for his inactivity.