George R.R. Martin has admitted that The Winds of Winter has become 'the great curse' of his life, telling a recent interviewer in the United States that the long‑promised sixth novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire saga is now 13 years late and still unfinished. The 75-year-old author said he is continuing to work on the book, but warned that progress remains painfully slow and uneven.
The Winds of Winter is the long‑awaited follow‑up to A Dance with Dragons, which was published in 2011 and left the sprawling cast of Westeros at a series of cliffhangers. Since then, the television adaptation Game of Thrones has come and gone, a prequel series (House of the Dragon) has launched, and a generation of readers has grown used to jokes that the book may never appear. Over the years, Martin has offered sporadic updates and shifting timelines, but the novel's absence has become almost as famous as the story itself.
