Gabriel García Márquez

The Nobel laureate weaves a story of a fantastic wedding, the return of the bride to her parents, her brothers' resolve to murder her corruptor, and the townspeoples' refusal to depart from routine.

A Novel

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Acaso sea Crónica de una muerte anunciada la obra más «realista» de Gabriel García Márquez, pues se basa en un hecho histórico acontecido en la tierra natal de escritor. Cuando empieza la novela, ya se saber que los hermanos Vicario van a matara a Santiago Nasar -de hecho ya le han matado- para vengar el honor ultrajado de su hermana Ángela, pero el relato termina precisamente en el momento en que Santiago Nasar.

El tiempo cíclico, tan utilizado por García Márquez en sus obras, reaparece aquí minuciosamente descompuesto en cada uno de sus momentos, reconstruido prolija y exactamente por el narrador, que va dando cuenta de lo que sucedió mucho tiempo atrás, que avanza y retrocede en su relato y hasta llega mucho tiempo después para contar el destino de los supervivientes.

La acción es, a un tiempo, colectiva y personal, clara y ambigua, y atrapa al lector desde un principio, a pesar de que conoce el desenlace de la trama. La dialéctica entre mito y realidad se ve potenciada aquí, una vez más, por una prosa tan cargada de fascinación que las eleva hasta las fronteras de la leyenda.

Crónica de una muerte anunciada

Lucía RG

Kat Albanese

Sarah Sammis

Gabriel García Márquez is best known for One Hundred Years of Solitude. I have many book blogger friends who love his most famous book but my husband hates it. Now I'm not the sort of person who can't read something my husband hates but I know my own tastes and I feel that I'll end up agreeing with him.

So rather than jump into his most famous book, I decided to try something else. I picked Chronicle of a Death Foretold because it was the shortest book available.

I read the book but I have to admit that I had as little luck with it as I've had with Heart of Darkness. I got the general idea about a previous murder being the impetus for a second murder years later. Many different people had the chance to set things right and prevent the killing. Complacency, grudges and so forth get in the way of compassion.

But did I connect with the book or feel the urge to read more of his work? No.

Cronica de una muerte anunciada

Vicky  Nuñez 

One of the most respected and celebrated novella of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It narrates the chronicle of Santiago Nasar and how his dead came to be in the full knowledge of the whole town who did nothing to stop him because his dead was so well known they all assumed he knew it too. Killed for a crime he did not commit his story is narrated by his best friend.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez astonished me unlike any other writer with so few pages. The guilt of the town and the secrecy of Angela Vicario of a secret that is never reveal, join together in this beautiful read.
Overall, anyone who has enjoyed his novels before can delight with this novella and his new readers can relish in the new found author.



La más respetada y celebre de las novelas cortas de Gabriel García Marquez, narra la historia de la crónica de la muerte de Santiago Nasar y como llego a pasar su muerte a pesar del conocimiento de todos los del pueblo quienes hicieron nada por detenerlo ya que la noticia era tan conocida que no podían creer que Santiago no supiera. Matado por un crimen que el no comete su historia es ahora dejada a las manos de su mejor amigo.
Gabriel Gracia Marquez me sorprendió como ningún otro escritor en tan pocas paginas. La culpa de la gente del pueblo y el secreto de Angela Vicario que nunca es revelado se unen juntas en esta bella historia.
Esta historia puede ser disfrutadas por aquellos lectores que ya han leído a Marquez y por aquellos nuevos que nunca han oído de el y que pueden gozar de este escritor encontrado.

sash.

Stellar writing. This is one of my favourite books by Garcia Marquez no doubt about it. The writing in this was absolutely beautiful and so was the story. A remote, rural, nameless town on the coast of Colombia witnesses the crime of one of their native sons and does absolutely nothing to stop it. Greta social commentary here, almost dystopian in its address and easily one of the best books I have ever read.

Deepika Ramesh

I began to read Gabo a couple of months ago, when I read an article about his books on a website called bookriot.com. The writer suggested that we start reading Gabo with his novella 'Memories of my melancholy whores' and move on to 'Love in the time of Cholera' and then to 'One hundred years of solitude.' I obeyed. When I read 'Memories of my melancholy whores', I knew that I was going to fall in love with Gabo. The book had many good sentences. It's about a 90 year old man, who desires to spend a night with a 14-year-old virgin on his 91st birthday night. Needless to mention that Gabo handled eccentric love and senility with a touch of prowess. Maybe, it's too presumptuous of me to say that. I finished reading the book in one sitting and read many reviews and quotes again and again. NYtimes thrashed the book. But after reading it, I realised that Gabo was incapable of writing a bad sentence and I knew that I was going to fall with that conjurer for the magic that he staged by weaving words. And with a lot of hope, I moved on to read 'Love in the time of Cholera' and it is one of the books that I will reread when I am old and tired. While everyone raves about 'One hundred years of solitude', I found how magical his writing was through 'Love in the time of Cholera' itself. The book bubbles with 'Magical Realism'. Then I couldn't make my mind between reading One Hundred Years of Solitude or Chronicles of a death foretold. Since I was having a gloomy Saturday, I settled with 'Chronicles of a death foretold'. If I compare it with the other two books that I have read, perhaps, my opinion is that Gabo didn't cheat me for he had handled journalistic narrative. And for a madly-in-love-with-him kind of fan of Gabo, I didn't have the heart to give anything less than four for this book although it didn't go down well with a lot of readers. Agree with many readers' opinion on this book having a dearth of quotable sentences that make the readers smile or sigh. Every book of even an accomplished writer is not a masterpiece and so, on that grounds, perhaps, we may let this book pass. :P As a Gabo-loyalist, I was happy about the way the story shaped up with a touch of mystery, which I didn't find in the other books that I read.

readingsnmusings 

"Fatality makes us invisible."

"They didn’t hear the shouts of the whole town, frightened by its own crime."

"I couldn’t bring myself to admit that life might end up resembling bad literature so much."

"In that smile, for the first time since her birth, Angela Vicario saw her as she was: a poor woman devoted to the cult of her defects."

"She only took the time necessary to say the name. She looked for it in the shadows, she found it at first sight among the many, many easily confused names from this world and the other, and she nailed it to the wall with her well-aimed dart, like a butterfly with no will whose sentence has always been written."

"Except for that, she thought there were no better-reared daughters. “They’re perfect,” she was frequently heard to say. “Any man will be happy with them because they’ve been raised to suffer.”

I am speechless this is a masterpiece. On a technical standpoint this is the best book I have read.

lauratrebilcock

Andrew John Kinney

This was my second GGM book, the first being One Hundred Years of Solitude. Marquez' style is not my favorite, but I found this book much more to my liking than One Hundred Years. Gabo's description of the town in which the murder takes place is Latin America of the dictatorship era writ small, with an ignorant but arrogant colonel as Mayor, and a strongly patriarchal society which sanctions honor killings and the rejection of a non-virgin bride. The story is a tragedy with a mystery attached: not who killed Santiago Nassar, but who took Angela Vicario's virginity? Marquez tale is also an allegory which illustrates how authoritarian societies are also generally incompetent, despite the alleged decisiveness of dictatorships. 

The disappointed groom, Bayardo san Roman, sets in motion a sequence of events which inevitably leads to the killing of Nassar, based on the mores of the time. Despite his apparent innocence, the wealthy Nassar is not a saintly figure; quite the opposite, in his machismo and droit du seigneur attitudes toward women who work in his household he is typical of a certain kind of privileged Latin American white man of his era. It is not made clear that he is hated by the poor, but the actions of the townspeople in not preventing his death speak volumes.

Magical realism mostly leaves me cold, so this generally realistic account was a good way for me to experience Marquez. Also, it is a short book, so I would recommend it to those looking for a first book by the great man.

Rohit Arondekar

Chronicle Of A Death Foretold is a short story with a simple plot as the narrator tries to piece together the events leading up to an honor killing after more than two decades. The writing was sublime and had a lot of content both visually and emotionally considering its a short story. I'm looking forward to reading more books by Gabriel García Márquez.

Brian

Como atrapaste y no me dejaste parar Gabo. Gracias.

Prashanth Srivatsa

Bizarre, disturbing and altogether ironic, Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a beautifully written, brutal tale of honour killing, and the uncertain hand of an entire village in its perpetration. Garcia Marquez doesn't bother in creating an air of mystery, and instead, sticks to planting in the reader's head, a fascinating horror at the way the murder unfolds. The language instantly transports you into Garcia's world, a setting deep rooted in rusty thoughts and customs, and characters different, and yet seemingly stitched out of the same skin cloth. Beautifully haunting.

Isabela H 

Ok I'm not gonna even lie, I wasn't expecting to like this book much and I didn't completely fall in love with it until the end. It's so worth it though.

Sebastián

Excelente. Gabriel García Márquez logra escribir una historia corta de la cual sabemos el desenlace con el título mismo, pero lo hace de una manera intrigante y llena de detalles que terminan por sorprender incluso hasta la última página.

Qissata mout ma'alan

Rammah Alensari

رواية تتحدث عن جرائم الشرف و قبح المجتمعات اللتي تشارك في الجرائم, نرى في هذا العمل أن كل أفراد المجتمع متواطئين في الجريمة و أياديهم ملطخة بالدماء حتى قبل حدوثها.
ماركيز هو معلم الرواية الكبير، غارق في المحلية، يستطيع أن يطبع المكان في ذاكرة القارئ لمدة أطول من أي روائي آخر بسبب اسهابه في اظهار انسانيات المكان و حويته.

Ahmed Salem

جريمة قتل ناتجة عن حادثة شرف غير معروق على وجه الدقة اذا كان (المتهم/المجرم) فعلا قد قام بها او لا

في جرائم الشرف في بلاد العرب، تقتل المرأة. في بلاد اللاتين، يقتل الرجل

اعظم ما كان في الرواية الغموض الذي لف الأحداث و تفسيرها في كل بضع ورقات من وجهة نظر احد الشخصيات 


و قبل ان انسى ... هل حدثتكم عن روعة ترجمة صالح علماني ؟؟ :)

Mohamed El Shahawy

منك لله يا ماركيز، ومنها لله كتاباتك المذهلة دي
--
الغباء والكسل أشد بأسا من القدر.. وأسألوا سنتياغو نصار

Maryam Mostafa

"لقد قتلوني أيتها الأم ويني"

Mohamed gamal

سنتياجو نصار ، الذي علم الجميع بقتله قبل قتله ، لا أحد يرى ما يجري أمام عينيه ، العقل البشري لا يقبل الأمور الواضحة بسهولة و يميل لعدم التصديق و تعقيد الأمور ، ماركيز ، عظيم بوصفه و سحره الخاص القادم من بعيد ، يبدأ بالتحدث على لسان القرية بأكملها ، ليخبرنا كل شخص بما حئث لسنتياجو نصار

Hesham Farg

حينما يصبح القتل على مرأى ومسمع من الجميع، ولا أحد يتحرك لمنع الجريمة فاعلم أن الجميع قاتلون 
رواية مأساوية تظهر الجانب غير الإنساني والمتوحش للبشر في كل زمان ومكان

Santiago Nasar morirà. I gemelli Vicario hanno già affilato i loro coltelli nel negozio di Faustino Santos. A Manaure, "villaggio bruciato dal sale dei Caraibi", lo sanno tutti: presto i fratelli della bella quanto svanita Angela vendicheranno l'onore di quella verginità rubatale in modo misterioso dall'aitante Santiago, ricco rampollo della locale colonia araba. Tutti lo sanno, ma nessuno fa alcunché per impedirlo: non la madre della vittima designata, non il parroco, non l'alcalde, neppure una delle numerose fanciulle che spasimano per il Nasar. E così la morte annunciata lo sorprende nel fulgore di una splendida mattinata tropicale. Ma non per agguato o per trappola: un destino bizzarro e crudele fa sì che la fine di Santiago si compia per un concorso di fatalità ed equivoci, mentre gli stessi assassini fanno di tutto perché qualcuno impedisca loro l'esecuzione. Basato su un fatto reale, Cronaca di una morte annunciata venne pubblicato nel 1981 (un anno prima del Nobel a García Márquez) e, pur nella brevità, rappresenta uno dei vertici della sua narrativa: un romanzo magistrale che sa fondere i toni della tragedia antica con il ritmo di una detective story in una grandiosa allegoria dell'assurdità della vita, l'apoteosi della fatalità.

Cronaca di una morte annunciata

Martina

3.5 ⭐
Non sono un'amante della letteratura classica, ogni mio tentativo di "approccio" a qualche classico è sempre stato fallimentare ma con questo libro si è aperto un piccolo spiraglio.
Ammetto di essermi convinta a leggerlo soltanto per il titolo e sono stata contenta di averlo fatto.
Un libro breve ma che ha raccontato una storia in modo esaustivo senza essere precipitoso o troppo lento.
Una storia originale anche se, molto probabilmente, tratta da qualche avvenimento realmente accaduto ma il modo in cui l'autore ha saputo raccontarlo mi è piaciuto ed è riuscito a rendere "leggera" una tematica molto forte quale la morte e il delitto d'onore.

Omar AlHashmi

As I was reading this book, I was thinking of either giving it a 3 or 2 star rating. Things didn't click with me and I was just confused as to how the logic behind the plot could be taken seriously. However as things started getting put together in the end it made more sense and ended up going to a 4 star rating. The book is written in a really nice way in which it goes back and forth in time without any confusion due to the great writing style. 
If you are looking for a quick read, this short book might be what you need. 

4.2/5

Lia Min

Fue entretenida, aunque la sentí algo corta,pero no le quita lo buena que es!

Chronicle of a Death Foretold A Novel

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