Publication
Mondadori (Italy) (1987)
Original publication date
1981
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Genres
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Awards
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — Fiction — 1983)
Notable Books List (1983)
Description
A man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place 27 years earlier, determined to get to the bottom of the story. Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to her parents. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover; and her twin brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Nasar for dishonoring their sister. Yet if everyone knew the murder was going to happen, why did no one intervene to stop it? The more that is learned, the less is understood, as the story races to its inexplicable conclusion.
User reviews
LibraryThing member sholt2001
Perhaps the least suspenseful murder mystery ever written, we are given the victim, perpetrators, murder scene and weapon and motivation almost from the very beginning. What we don't know is how it was allowed to play out even though everyone knew the victim was to die--except the man himself--and
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nobody wanted him dead--not even the murderers. Marquez examines how a series of seemingly inconsequential events can contribute to enormous results and that the sometimes the most puzzling aspects of a crime come after it is solved. And the solutions to those puzzles might be the opposite of what you'd expect. Told as an investigation many years after the fact, the narrative is far from linear, but still paints a crystal clear picture of life in the town the day Santiago Nasar died. A brief and vivid piece, it's style is unique and its conclusion surprising. A classic for good reason. Show Less
LibraryThing member John
Chronicle of a Death Foretold begins with an arresting opening line: "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." And that sets the line of the whole story. This is a short novel, but it is written very
(Feb/06)
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tightly with a cast of characters: pretty well the whole village knew that two brothers were set on killing Nasar for his deflowering of their sister which resulted in her husband returning her to the family the morning after their wedding because she was not a virgin. There is mystery: was Nasar really the guilty party as claimed by Pura Vicario? He was certainly in the habit of deflowering any young girls he could get his hands on, and Pura was beautiful, but it is noted that they had absolutely never been seen together and there were no rumours of any liaison. Pura maintained to her death that it had been Nasar, but was she protecting someone else? After her statement caused the death of Nasar she could hardly recant and thus compound her shame. This is a novel about the "chain of chance events" that led to the murder of Nasar. Practically everyone in the village knew what the brothers intended because they were very open about it (but were they so open because in fact they hoped to be stopped so that they would not kill, but honour could be assuaged?) and any number of people tried to warn Nasar, or assumed that others were doing so, or that the brothers were not serious. This chain of events and assumptions and action or non-action, and missed opportunities, did all came together to "make the absurdity possible" when the brothers did murder Nasar, on his doorstep, beating on a door barred seconds before by his mother who assumed he was safe in the house. Afterwards, for years, the various players tried to recall what they had been doing, or not doing in the fateful time between when the intent of the brothers became clear and the deed was done, attempts to find the "exact knowledge of the place and the mission assigned to us by fate". A very satisfying novel. (Feb/06)
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LibraryThing member StephLaymon
Chronicle of a Death Foretold is perfectly titles. From the very beginning, we know that the story is of the death of Santiago Nasar, we know who kills him, and why all from the very beginning. What's left? A wonderful unfolding story of the details leading up to the event as told by a single
The story is not only fascinating, it is chocked full of all sorts of moral and social dilemmas. There are a number of people who know of the impending murder, yet there are several camps of people, those who try to stop it, those who don't take it too seriously, and those who may even look to the tragedy for a dose of excitement.
What makes Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez so riveting is the differences in the story from one person's account to another's. This style of telling divulges so much of human nature, the way things are remembered, the way things are chosen to be remembered, and the way people embellish in the name of a good story.
I highly recommend reading Chronicle of a Death Foretold as long as you are not too horribly scared away by a large number of characters.
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narrator, through the eyes of the dozens of townspeople who are being interviewed. The details are based on a real life event in which Gabriel Garcia Marquez was familiar.The story is not only fascinating, it is chocked full of all sorts of moral and social dilemmas. There are a number of people who know of the impending murder, yet there are several camps of people, those who try to stop it, those who don't take it too seriously, and those who may even look to the tragedy for a dose of excitement.
What makes Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez so riveting is the differences in the story from one person's account to another's. This style of telling divulges so much of human nature, the way things are remembered, the way things are chosen to be remembered, and the way people embellish in the name of a good story.
I highly recommend reading Chronicle of a Death Foretold as long as you are not too horribly scared away by a large number of characters.
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LibraryThing member browner56
Chronicle of a Death Foretold relates the events surrounding the revenge killing of Santiago Nasar, a wealthy young landowner in a small South American town, who has been accused of defiling a young woman whose husband “returns” her to her family on their wedding night. However, as the reader
This book is considerably shorter than García Márquez’s more famous works (e.g., One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera) and contains fewer of the magic realism elements for which he is widely renown. Nevertheless, Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a small masterpiece in its own right. Certainly, the author’s extraordinary gifts with language and images are fully realized here—this novel was published shortly after he received the Nobel Prize for Literature—and he has created some truly memorable scenes and characters. Above all else, in its depiction of a town that fails to save Santiago from an unjust demise, the book soars as an allegory for the indifference of the governmental and religious institutions toward the people that frustrated García Márquez in the Colombia of his day. Simply put, this is story-telling at its best.
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soon appreciates, the mystery about Santiago’s death is not the real point of the book; in fact, the story describes what one critic has called “the most poorly planned murder in the annals of modern fiction”. Told in a distinctly non-linear fashion, we learn of the murder in the first line of the novel, which then proceeds to reconstruct the actions that led up to the victim’s final moments from several different perspectives. This book is considerably shorter than García Márquez’s more famous works (e.g., One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera) and contains fewer of the magic realism elements for which he is widely renown. Nevertheless, Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a small masterpiece in its own right. Certainly, the author’s extraordinary gifts with language and images are fully realized here—this novel was published shortly after he received the Nobel Prize for Literature—and he has created some truly memorable scenes and characters. Above all else, in its depiction of a town that fails to save Santiago from an unjust demise, the book soars as an allegory for the indifference of the governmental and religious institutions toward the people that frustrated García Márquez in the Colombia of his day. Simply put, this is story-telling at its best.
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LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
Marquez's language is ever-beautiful, ever worth exploring, and this work proves to be no exception. Yet, much as I enjoyed the story, I can't say that it entranced me in the same way as his other work. I can't say that it moved too quickly, because I find his short stories to be magical, but
I love Marquez, and I recommend him whole-heartedly, but I'd probably suggest starting with another work. This was a lovely diversion for what it was, but it just didn't live up to the standard set by Marquez with his other works.
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something about this work just didn't live up to his other works. It may be that there was slightly too much wandering in story or character, or something else entirely, but one way or another, this probably won't be one of his works that I'll find particularly memorable.I love Marquez, and I recommend him whole-heartedly, but I'd probably suggest starting with another work. This was a lovely diversion for what it was, but it just didn't live up to the standard set by Marquez with his other works.
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LibraryThing member itchyfeetreader
I am not 100 percent sure I can do this justice but here goes! About those contradictions … the story is an odd mix of journalistic and magical realism styles that actually complement each other excellently. I found the language and style to be both rich and descriptive and yet the non linear
A side note – I feel Marquez carefully pokes fun at the hypocrisy of the townspeople in their attitudes and approaches to gender which provides an interesting backdrop to the lack of action they ultimately take when it becomes common knowledge that Santiago is to be killed.
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approach to the story telling and the fact that we start to see what has occurred from a number of different characters points of view repetitive builds a level of tension. I started the novel expecting a fairly straightforward chronicling of the crime and yet I finished with no stronger sense of whether Santiago is guilty of the initial act that leads to his death or not however the telling of the story was satisfying enough that this did not other me as much as it would in the hands of a less capable author. A side note – I feel Marquez carefully pokes fun at the hypocrisy of the townspeople in their attitudes and approaches to gender which provides an interesting backdrop to the lack of action they ultimately take when it becomes common knowledge that Santiago is to be killed.
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LibraryThing member mamzel
As is explained by the title, this is the chronicle of a murder in a small town and how it was possible to have occurred even though everyone knew it was going to happen. A young woman is married and her husband discovers that she is not a virgin on their wedding night. He drags her back to her
It was fun to imagine this same scenario today where people would whip out their cell phones and Twitter the news of the impending murder (#deathforetold) and be on hand to film it and post it to Facebook.
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home by the hair where her mother beats her and demands to know who defiled her. She gives the name of a man of Arab descent and her two twin brothers arm themselves with hog killing knives. They tell everyone they meet of their intentions but everyone just assumed that someone else would stop them.It was fun to imagine this same scenario today where people would whip out their cell phones and Twitter the news of the impending murder (#deathforetold) and be on hand to film it and post it to Facebook.
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LibraryThing member Banoo
Loss of honor, loss of virtue, loss of innocence, loss of life, loss of the facts... much was lost in this little book.
Bayardo marries Angela. Bayardo on his honeymoon night realizes that Angela is no Angel, pure and simple, pun intended. Angela names her violator, poor Santiago. And poor Santiago
And don't worry, these are not spoilers. You learn all of this in the first few pages.
Told by an old friend years after the event took place, this is the chronicle of a death foretold... as the title of the book might suggest.
Seems everyone in town knew who, where, why, when, and how Santiago was going to get it... except for poor Santiago.
An excellent little book by an excellent writer. Read it.
Bayardo marries Angela. Bayardo on his honeymoon night realizes that Angela is no Angel, pure and simple, pun intended. Angela names her violator, poor Santiago. And poor Santiago
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gets butchered.And don't worry, these are not spoilers. You learn all of this in the first few pages.
Told by an old friend years after the event took place, this is the chronicle of a death foretold... as the title of the book might suggest.
Seems everyone in town knew who, where, why, when, and how Santiago was going to get it... except for poor Santiago.
An excellent little book by an excellent writer. Read it.
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LibraryThing member SheWoreRedShoes
Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a great reading experience on so many levels. The symmetrical novel is excellent for studying structural aspects of narrative: five chapters of roughly equal length, five comparable narrative arcs, five nearly identical openings and endings, and five layers of
Garcia Marquez’s prose is lush and exacting, as always. The reader clearly sees the characters, the action, the town, the tragedy of the actions of all concerned. I marvel at the novelist’s ability to render in such a small space so many full characters--full because the characters are fallible and brutal and tender, just as we all are. Was Santiago culpable? Was Angela? Her two brothers? Who bears the greatest responsibility for the death of Santiago? We don’t get definitive answers from the novel or novelist: we are left to ponder these riddles for ourselves. So if you want neat clean solutions, well, there’s plenty of other reads for you in this vast world of pulp. But if you want a reading experience about human-all-too-human life marked with an exuberance for writing so characteristic of Garcia Marquez, then look no further than this novel where you know from the very first sentence what happens in the end, and yet you find the novelist has so much more to tell you than just the facts, ma’am. What a tremendous novel. I simply love it.
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characters, motives, actions, and inactions all contributing toward this story of chastity, marriage, duty, honor, and revenge. At the sentence level, this novel is pristine: the care and devotion to the sentence is much like a poet’s attention to the sentence, to the line, that is, utter devotion. The characters are rendered by a reliable journalistic narrator, who is himself a side player in this story. We see glimpses of characters and hear perfectly pitched dialogue that reveals much about the essence of the main characters, and of important background players. The town itself functions as a character, perhaps the most culpable in this murder: for large social groups (or towns, let’s say) form and perpetrate social conventions about chastity, virginity, men, women, duty, and honor, and willfully act to reinforce those social conventions again and again. We are much braver, or much more frightened, when we form a crowd.Garcia Marquez’s prose is lush and exacting, as always. The reader clearly sees the characters, the action, the town, the tragedy of the actions of all concerned. I marvel at the novelist’s ability to render in such a small space so many full characters--full because the characters are fallible and brutal and tender, just as we all are. Was Santiago culpable? Was Angela? Her two brothers? Who bears the greatest responsibility for the death of Santiago? We don’t get definitive answers from the novel or novelist: we are left to ponder these riddles for ourselves. So if you want neat clean solutions, well, there’s plenty of other reads for you in this vast world of pulp. But if you want a reading experience about human-all-too-human life marked with an exuberance for writing so characteristic of Garcia Marquez, then look no further than this novel where you know from the very first sentence what happens in the end, and yet you find the novelist has so much more to tell you than just the facts, ma’am. What a tremendous novel. I simply love it.
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LibraryThing member Boobalack
After reading so much praise for this author, I purchased two books by him. The first one was a major disappointment, and had I read it first, I would not have bought the second one, but since I already had it and had just finished Love in the Time of Cholera, I decided to read it and get it over
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with. Big mistake. Big waste of time. Big waste of money. I did not enjoy reading about the condition of the dead body, with its intestines hanging out, nor did I enjoy reading about the autopsy. Never again will I buy a book by Gabriel Garcia Màrquez. Show Less
LibraryThing member hemlokgang
As always, Marquez has written a powerful story in this novella. In a deceptively simple plot, Marquez raises questions as to what is the level of responsibility one has to one's community and its residents? Must we protect them? Where is our personal responsibility? We know from the start that a
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man has died, and then the story unfolds. To me this indicates that the point of the story is not the death, but the convoluted series of events and choices made in the hours leading up to the death. What a phenomenal writer! Show Less
LibraryThing member theboylatham
6/10.
Interesting story about the death of a single man and the effect of that day on the lives of those involved. I like the short story where GGM is concerned.
Interesting story about the death of a single man and the effect of that day on the lives of those involved. I like the short story where GGM is concerned.
LibraryThing member IlluminatedWorld
In this book Marquez uses names that have specific meanign to provide hidden meanings in the story. For example his mother's name was Luisa Santiaga Marquez Iguaran as in Dr. Dioniosio Igauran. There's a lot more to the story than just a chicano writer using traditional magical realism.
LibraryThing member klarusu
This is a book of quiet genius. Marquez expertly crafts a picture of communal guilt in the killing of an evidently (or possibly not.....) innocent man in the name of 'family honour'. Although the final conclusion is known to the reader from the beginning, there is still artistry in the building of
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suspense throughout the book to the eventual act. The easy self-justification of a community who chose to say nothing rather than speak out to warn the victim is explored in depth through the investigations of a community member years later and his careful attempts to chronicle the events that led up to this killing appear as a modern day documentary or investigative reportage. The reader is left feeling frustrated by the missed opportunities to avert the course of events. The interviewer and narrator himself remains analytically detached, leaving one with the sense that whilst he dispassionately examines the culpability of others, he is yet to face his own. A very thought provoking book which adds weight to the adage that for evil to prosper, all that is needed is a good man that says nothing. Show Less
LibraryThing member Clurb
An unravelling tale of a town's complicity in a local murder. Very readable.
LibraryThing member AnneliM
A short novel, a jewel of its kind, in the style of the famous author.
LibraryThing member ex_ottoyuhr
Unlike _One Hundred Years of Solitude_, this book is actually comprehensible. But if its quality's any indication, _One Hundred Years_ must not be worth bothering with either...
LibraryThing member ferebend
Those who've read the more famous One Hundred Years of Solitude will recognize the same style and the similar setting and characters. In fact, this book takes place in the same universe, with several references to people and places from the former.
This is a fun, quirky, little mystery novel.
This book gave me the feeling that, if One Hundred Years of Solitude had been 300 pages shorter, it would've been awesome. Chronicle does not drag on at any point. The story is told summarily, and very satisfactorily, through interviews with the town's quirky (can you tell I'm overly fond of that word?) characters.
Magical realism is mercifully kept to a bare minimum, with only a couple of things that could be construed as supernatural or surreal. This is quite a relief, as it was used exhaustively and largely ineffectually in Solitude.
I would certainly recommend this, especially as a first foray into Márquez' work.
This is a fun, quirky, little mystery novel.
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Quirky, because there isn't actually any mystery, as the eponymous death was indeed foretold, with the perpetrators known to all. The mystery part comes in as the narrator returns to the town a couple decades after the events to try and peace it all together and find out how such a preventable murder was not, in fact, prevented.This book gave me the feeling that, if One Hundred Years of Solitude had been 300 pages shorter, it would've been awesome. Chronicle does not drag on at any point. The story is told summarily, and very satisfactorily, through interviews with the town's quirky (can you tell I'm overly fond of that word?) characters.
Magical realism is mercifully kept to a bare minimum, with only a couple of things that could be construed as supernatural or surreal. This is quite a relief, as it was used exhaustively and largely ineffectually in Solitude.
I would certainly recommend this, especially as a first foray into Márquez' work.
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LibraryThing member AnnThatcher
Murder mystery without the mystery to the murder. The narrator already knows the who, where, and why. The question is about the people in the town... They knew and did nothing to stop it. Well written by a great Author.
LibraryThing member jburlinson
It's not that I don't enjoy Marquez' writings, it's more that I think the translations may emphasize a certain portentousness that may not (or, for all I know, may) be present in the originals. Just look at the title of this book, which in Spanish is Crónica de una muerte anunciada. The last word
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is translated by Gregory Rabassa as "Foretold." Is it wrong? Well, not completely; but it does underscore the "magical realism" element much more than the simple, and more exact, "Announced," or even "Proclaimed." True, the novella begins with a character presumably misunderstanding the more ominous signficance of the soon-to-be-victim's dream; so, "foretelling" is certainly part of the meaning of the title. But, much more, "announced" has a wider and more compelling application; it comprehends both the identification of the victim as the bride's "perpetrator" (which of course leads to the inevitable consequences), but also to the murderers' repeated declarations of their intentions, which gives numerous characters a chance to speculate on the ambivalence of the killers. There is also also the sense that the narrrator is continuing to "announce" the death decades after its enactment, a sense that is lost with the use of the word "foretold." Am I making too much of this? Perhaps so; it's only everything. Show Less
LibraryThing member louisville
In this novella by Nobel Prize winner, Garcia Marquez, a man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place 27 years earlier, determined to get to the bottom of the story. Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in
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disgrace to her parents. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover; and her twin brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Nasar for dishonoring their sister. Yet if everyone knew the murder was going to happen, why did no one intervene to stop it? The more that is learned, the less is understood, and as the story races to its inexplicable conclusion, an entire society--not just a pair of murderers—is put on trial. Show Less
LibraryThing member Becky221
I love Garcia-Marquez's writing!! Witty, sardonic, and beautiful with humorous touches. The death really was foretold in so many ways, yet how did it happen? I would have liked to learn a little more about the narrator/friend.
LibraryThing member JCO123
Interesting and fun to read. Very typical of Garcia Marquez.
LibraryThing member jennlschmidt
As a Enlish 3 IB student, i have to admit that i found this book to be extreamly awful when just read as entertainment. however, as i started to analyze the different symbols and motifs throught the novel, i saw a completely different novel. The main question is whether or not Santaigo Nasar is
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truely the one who took Angela's virginity. I beieve it to be quite apparent that he was not the one to blame, so i understand why Garcia also points to her father. did anyone else have this opinion? Show Less
LibraryThing member kaionvin
What's the point of inverting the chronological order of the unfolding of the crime if there's no payoff? It definitely added to the tension of the beginning of the novel, but really by the end, the murder seemed rather banal, despite the gruesomenss of how it was committed, merely because the
But really, it's easy to write of people failing. (Which is why it is such a lazy device to kill off people in a short story. It ties up loose ends. It's a cheap thrill. But you get criticism, not constructive criticism. You don't actively *learn*.) It's especially to write of people failing when you tell the audience they fail from the beginning. Hence the most interesting parts of the story are 1) the lives of twins (though their moral dilemna pre-killing Santiago is also interesting) and 2) the life-as-a-spinster of Angela Vicario. Moving on is interesting, compelling- it teaches. Dwelling, reliving, condemning- not so much.
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characters seemed to find it rather banal too. I suspect it's meant to inspire some feelings of horror and empathy at the tragedy of uncaringness in the world, of the shirking of responsiblity and and inevitability of being forced by social pressure (I think some more familiarity with the cultural context would help me here though). But really, it's easy to write of people failing. (Which is why it is such a lazy device to kill off people in a short story. It ties up loose ends. It's a cheap thrill. But you get criticism, not constructive criticism. You don't actively *learn*.) It's especially to write of people failing when you tell the audience they fail from the beginning. Hence the most interesting parts of the story are 1) the lives of twins (though their moral dilemna pre-killing Santiago is also interesting) and 2) the life-as-a-spinster of Angela Vicario. Moving on is interesting, compelling- it teaches. Dwelling, reliving, condemning- not so much.
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Media reviews
In short, one expects from ''Chronicle of a Death Foretold'' another powerful dose of the fabulous and surreal. But behold! While in no way resembling conventional social realism, ''Chronicle'' is not nearly so fantastic as Garcia Marquez's earlier novels. It contains a powerfully plausible plot -
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a dream-like detective story, really, that pursues the questions of why and how two young men have undertaken a brutal murder that they actually had not wanted to commit. Show Less
Language
Original language
Spanish
ISBN
9788439711117
Physical description
5.83 inches