Setting out to reconstruct a murder that took place 27 years earlier, this chronicle moves backwards and forwards in time, through the contradictions of memory and moments lost in time. Its irony gives the book the nuances of a political fable.
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My favourite book by one of the world's greatest authors. You're in the hands of a master (Mariella Frostrup )
A work of high explosiveness – the proper stuff of Nobel prizes. An exceptional novel. (The Times )
A masterpiece (Evening Standard )
Brilliant writer, brilliant book (Dan Rhodes, The Guardian ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
A work of high explosiveness – the proper stuff of Nobel prizes. An exceptional novel. (The Times )
A masterpiece (Evening Standard )
Brilliant writer, brilliant book (Dan Rhodes, The Guardian ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
About the Author
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927- ) was born in Aracataca, Colombia. His most recent book, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, is his first new novel to be published in a decade and is available as a Penguin Paperback from August 2007. He is the author of several novels, works of non-fiction and collections of short stories, including Leaf Storm (1955); One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967); The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975); Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981) and The General in His Labyrinth (1989). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
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First Sentence
ON THE DAY they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
ON THE DAY they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Marquez displays his true journalistic background in this short novel. Moving effortlessly from past to present and seamlessly interweaving accounts from a myriad of characters and his own perceptions he presents us with a riveting account of a 27 year-old killing. There is a dreamlike quality about his language and style that I found very entertaining.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
By HORAK
Format:Paperback
A man returns to the town where the murder of Santiago Nasar took place 27years before.
Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning onthe Monday he was going to be killed by the twins Pedro and Pablo Vicario.The narrator is told by Placida Linero, Santiago Nasar's mother, thatwithin the hour, her 21 year old son would be dead.
Why did the twins want to kill the proprietor of The Divine Face, theranch he had inherited from his father? Why did they chose that particularmorning, when the bishop was due to visit the village? Why wasn't SantiagoNasar aware of the fact that somebody had shoved an envelope under thedoor of his house with a written document warning him that he was goingkilled, stating in addition the place, the motive and other quite precisedetails of the plot? How could the murder have been committed despite thefact that nearly all the inhabitants of the town knew that it wasinevitably going to happen?
The investigation of this murder takes thequality of a hallucinatory exploration into the past. The narrator's questfor the truth leads him into the darkness of human intentions, a truththat perpetually seems to slither away. This small masterpiece is one ofthe greatest classics of the 20th century.
Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning onthe Monday he was going to be killed by the twins Pedro and Pablo Vicario.The narrator is told by Placida Linero, Santiago Nasar's mother, thatwithin the hour, her 21 year old son would be dead.
Why did the twins want to kill the proprietor of The Divine Face, theranch he had inherited from his father? Why did they chose that particularmorning, when the bishop was due to visit the village? Why wasn't SantiagoNasar aware of the fact that somebody had shoved an envelope under thedoor of his house with a written document warning him that he was goingkilled, stating in addition the place, the motive and other quite precisedetails of the plot? How could the murder have been committed despite thefact that nearly all the inhabitants of the town knew that it wasinevitably going to happen?
The investigation of this murder takes thequality of a hallucinatory exploration into the past. The narrator's questfor the truth leads him into the darkness of human intentions, a truththat perpetually seems to slither away. This small masterpiece is one ofthe greatest classics of the 20th century.
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful
By M. B. Alcat
Format:Paperback
How can an author keep the reader interested in his book when he gives away the ending in the first page?. Well, he needs to be an extraordinary writer, with the ability to enthrall the reader completely. Of course, not everybody can do that, but the truth is that the author of this book isn't "everybody". Gabriel García Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, and he clearly deserved it. You can easily see that if you read some of the many master pieces he wrote: this is just one of them.
"Chronicle of a Death Foretold" has many ingredients that make it a wonderful book. In my opinion the most important ones are García Marquez's brilliant prose, and the risk he took by doing the unthinkable: bluntly telling the reader the end of the story in the first pages of the book.
However, I think I should also highlight that the story itself is excellent: a wedding, a bride returned to her family in disgrace, her brothers forced by their code of honor to kill her previous lover, and announcing to all that want to hear them that they intend to do so. This is indeed the "Chronicle of a Death Foretold"... Everyone knows who is going to die, except for the intended victim and his mother.
On the whole, this book is incredibly good and somewhat picturesque. The story takes place many years ago, in a provincial town with different values from those we have nowadays, and García Márquez manages to make the reader understand that. I couldn't ignore the sense of fatalism that pervades the book, probably due to the fact that something is already certain: things will turn out badly in the end.
Despite that, even though we know from the first page what is going to happen, we still want to find out why did it happen. There is another pertinent question: who were the culprits?. The girl's brothers or the whole town, that knowing what they were going to do didn't stop them?. In Lope de Vega's words, I believe that "Fuenteovejuna did it"... But that is merely a personal opinion.
My advice?. Buy this book, read it, and reach your own conclusions. You are highly likely to enjoy the process :)
Belen Alcat
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
An astounding read
The brilliant author has once again intrigued me from page one to the end. I am there with the characters, I almost feel that I'm to blame for not forewarning the victim of his... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Emily Parr
5.0 out of 5 stars
WOW
I really enjoyed reading this book, amazing!
I would deferentially recommend this book to anyone as it blew my mind away
I would deferentially recommend this book to anyone as it blew my mind away
Published 4 months ago by Parnyan
4.0 out of 5 stars
I loved it
This book was very good and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to reading the sequel but am not sure when it's due to be published.
Published 7 months ago by GeorgeB
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Community's Shame!
This novella is written in the style of a documentary with the narrator wandering a small town and interviewing the locals in turn about an incident some time before - the murder... Read more
Published 10 months ago by D Brown
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good but not the best
I suppose the quality of a translated book has much to do with the translator. When I ordered this book I was expecting something along the lines of Love in the Time of Cholera,... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Renata Lopes Vincent
4.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly enjoyable
This is a murder story but not a thriller - we are told at the beginning about the murder, who did it and why. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Phil O'Sofa
2.0 out of 5 stars
WHAT WAS THE POINT EXACTLY?
Not sure I understood the point of this book. It was obviously about a chap murdered by two other chaps and was a slow blow by blow account - taken on through the eyes of various... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Rocke Harder
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must Read for lovers of Literature
To fully appreciate this book, you have to first understand that most writers would have written this entire book within a paragraph. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Camajama
3.0 out of 5 stars
OK
This was an OK read but very disappointing after the superb 'Love in the time of Cholera', but a different scale of book.
Published 20 months ago by croc fan
3.0 out of 5 stars
Book Club Book
Good book in not quite as good a condition as I had expected. To be fair, I ordered this as a second-hand copy, though from previous experience second hand books are pretty... Read more
Published 21 months ago by M, Oxfordshire
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