Chronicle of a Death Foretold

I wanted to like this book. I read the entire thing hoping that it would redeem itself before it was over. Much of it I had to force myself through just to read it. I think I needed a list of characters to help me remember who was who. This came as a highly recommended book and obviously a lot of people really like it because it's rated well. Maybe I'm missing something? It just seemed boring and confusing. :/

Half of my book club thought it was one of the greatest reads ever....but I was among the other half. Slow paced, same ol' same ol', not my kind of read. But the woman who suggested it even gave it out as Christmas gifts to her best friends.

The book arrived before schedule. Wonderful and great product. Totally new condition as described. Well wrapped. Happy customer. My son got the book in time for his English project. Thanks a million. AA+++

I bought this book for a present, but i had to keep it for myself. The quality of the paper is really bad and the pages have diferent sizes giving it a really bad look. If u r buyng it to read by urself, go ahead, it is complete.

"Chronicle of a Death Foretold" (1981) is a difficult, enigmatic short novel by the celebrated Columbian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Set in a small, unnamed Columbian village the book revolves around the murder of Santiago Nasar, 21 with pig knives by twin brothers, Pedro and Pablo Vicario, 24. The murder resulted when the twin's beautiful young sister, Angela, reluctantly agreed to an arranged marriage to a wealthy man, Bayardo, whom she did not love. When Bayardo discovered on the wedding night that Angela was not a virgin, he returned her to her home. Angela's mother then beat her unmercifully. Angela named Nasar as the man who had deflowered her. With reluctance, Pedro and Pablo set out to avenge their sister's honor by killing Nasar. As the story develops, virtually everyone in the town was aware of the impending murder and took no steps or ineffectual steps to stop it. Some individuals familiar with Nasar and his reputation for philandering may have actively abetted the murder.

Marquez tells the story in an elliptical way that resists easy summation. The event gets recounted from a variety of times and perspectives which are not fully consistent with each other and which are meant to be partial and unreliable. The manner of the telling and the style are as important or more so than the event. The book opens with an immediate announcement of the theme: "[o]n 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." The opening chapter concludes with the announcement: '[t]hey've already killed him."

The story is told by an unnamed narrator who was present when the events of the story occurred. He has become a journalist and returns to the small, forgotten village 27 years after the fact to explore the incident and the people involved further. The narrator is at least partially unreliable given his relationship to both the family of the bride and to the murdered man. His motives in returning to the village and in pursuing the incident after the lapse of so many years also is important and critical to trying to understand the story.

The story develops in layers in a concentric non-linear way. The narrator gives an overview of the event as it apparently developed followed by reports of official investigations and of incidents over the years prior to the narrator's final appearance in the village. Many of the records of the case have been lost or are otherwise incomplete. The views offered by various participants and observers tend to change with time. The gruesome murder itself, by the twins who made every effort to be stopped in their action, is recounted only at the end of the book.

The narrator's unstated role in the incident, the incomplete records, the nature of the village, and the passage of time warn against drawing hard conclusions from the story. Some of the background of the book turns upon Columbian history, including its civil wars, and its culture; but the themes of the book are tantalizingly broader. An important aspect of the book lies in the complicity of the townspeople in the murder and in their failure to intervene. Various reasons are suggested for this complicity, but the matter remains highly ambiguous and resists generalization. There is substantial doubt about whether the murdered man was "guilty" of the defloration of which he had been accused. The book discusses the sexual code of the small, changing town, in which women were expected to come to their husband without sexual experience while the men satisfied their sexual needs liberally with prostitutes. The Catholicism of the people gets a great deal of notice, most of which suggests complicity in a macho sexual world with sharp economic distinctions as well between the poor and the wealthy. With all of this, the role of chance, fate, and character also receive emphasis in Marquez' telling. The tone of the book reflects ambiguity and irony.

The story line is simple but the many characters, the shifts in time and perspective, the lack of information, and the narrator's studied ambiguity make this book provocative and difficult. More than pat answers on for example the need to resist evil or on the inadequacy of machismo culture, the book encourages reflection. The book tells a story with themes and gaps without moralizing. It is a beautifully written work of modern literature.

Robin Friedman

Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.

Even more so after my discovery that the story is actually based on true events that occurred in Gabriel Marquez's earlier years in Colombia! Obviously the names have been changed, and this book is written in the form of a fiction novel, but it is one that makes you root for the character and hope the ending JUST might change, even though you know it won't because you know that he dies from the very first page...

The writing is impeccable, and the storytelling is gripping. It made me feel so many things in such a short span (it is a very short novel). When it was over, I felt such frustration that I couldn't change the inevitable.

Almost thirty years after the crime's been committed, a lawyer returns to the town to try and find out what happened the night of this untimely murder. What follows are different, fragmented, accounts of what happened that night, and it is up to you to try and put together what actually happened.

Here's what I gathered: a girl is married off to a wealthy man, who claimed her as his from the moment he set eyes on her and her family was more than happy to give her away due to his status. On her wedding night, she was advised to cut herself to pretend to have lost her virginity that night. Something must have gone wrong, or she couldn't go through with the pretense that she is unceremoniously dropped at her family's doorstep due to her lack of virginity, bringing them dishonor. Her mother, in anger, beats a name out of her. Santiago Nasar. The man who, supposedly, took her innocence. Her brothers decide to avenge her honor and immediately leave to seek Santiago and kill him.

They walk around town, running into several townsfolk, publicly announcing that they are off to kill Santiago. Some people don't take them seriously, others try to find a way to warn Santiago...but unfortunately, no one is able to stop the inevitable. What really bothers me is that this was a crime that could've easily been avoided, but wasn't. People simply accepted the fact that Santiago was going to be killed and did nothing to stop it.

What was even more frustrating for me, was the scene at the end when Santiago ran home and found the door barred against him due to the confusion of events. His mother thinking he was sleeping upstairs, was trying to protect him by barring the doors, only she ended up facilitating his death.

In a gory final scene reminiscent of Caesar's murder, I sat there reading with my heart beating wildly, and my face stuck in a pained expression that lasted several moments after the book was over.

A wonderful story of a death foretold. Saddens me that it's true, but does not take away from how wonderful the story actually is.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold was my first glimpse into the works of Garcia Marquez. The book is brief and is about the narrator's journey back into Columbia to inquire about the death of Santiago Nasar. Nasar was the victim of two brother's rage - they accuse Nasar of violating their sister prior to her wedding, and take the duty of avenging their sister's honor. The book revolves around Nasar's death and looks at the circumstances surrounding his murder. A question that arises is "why didn't people try to intervene more than they did?" given that the death of Nasar was "foretold" by the brothers who intended to kill him? Perhaps it's because the author is drawing a christological parallel between Nasar and the main protagonist of the New Testament, with the characters of the story representing characters found in the gospels (the brothers' names are Pedro and Pablo - apostolic names). There are other allusions that suggest that this was the author's intent, which makes this story interesting to analyze.

I recently found this book on a shelf in a classroom I inherited from my former teacher. Although it is an old copy, I could tell that it had never been read. The binding cracked as I turned the yellowed pages to inspect my find. It had probably been sitting there for twenty years before I picked it up and brought it home. Although I am a Marquez fan (I devoured “Love in the Time of Cholera” during my senior year of high school, the same year I had sat in that classroom, and I fell in love with “One Hundred Years of High School” in college), I had never even heard of this novel (Novella? It is so short). Still, once I started, I could not put it down.

“Chronicle of a Death Foretold” is the story of the death of Santiago Nasar, who was murdered by the twin brothers of Angela Vicario, a young bride whom Santiago had allegedly deflowered. This chronicle is not just the story of Santiago, however; it is a story of a town and of a people who knowingly stand by and watch a man be slain by two unwilling murderers. It is a beautiful tale that gripped me from start to end, that engrossed me as the climax built and I watched our lascivious victim, our innocent Christ-figure stagger to his death.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez won the Noble Prize in Literature in 1982 for the sum of his works only a year after his novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In my limited experience with fiction, I heard echoes of Edgar Allen Poe's first person narrative horror mysteries. There is no mystery in this story though, but there is horror. One of the horror's is the small town hypocrisy that permits young men to fulfill their lusts, but any young women who do likewise bring shame on their family, a shame that seeks retribution by honor killing. One of the many ironies in the book is that it is the Latins who perform the honor killing against an Arab. The author also condemns the rash decision to murder by contrasting the findings of the narrator over a decade later, finding that the accusation by one woman, was enough to bring judgment, though the victim was known for his Romeo ways. Most of the town served as a jury in Santiago Nasar's "trial," also agreeing with the decision of the murderous twin brothers who repeatedly announced to any who would listen their intention. But the narrator asserts the twins were actually hoping someone would thwart them. The mayor took their butchering knives, but went home and got two more. They had just spent the night partying with Nasar, now they felt condemned to kill them and defend their sister's honor.

Since almost no one accepts responsibility to stop a murder, everyone ends up sharing the blame. This last concept makes me think of Nazi Germany. I actually started this book to take a break from my reading on the genocides of World War 2.

On an entirely different angle, the religious themes were loud. Santiago had hoped to visit the bishop who was steaming down river, but the bishop did not pull into port, only waving at those who brought gifts and offerings to celebrate his visit, suggesting the church does not really care to visit with the back country folk, such as Santiago (Saint James [Jacob in Hebrew, the crafty grandson of Abraham]) son of the Arab immigrant Ibrahim (Abraham) who also slept with his maid (Hagar). Maria Cervantes runs a brothel (Mary Magdalene). The defended sister is Angela Vicario (angel priest/vicar). One of Santiago's wound marks are described as stigmata. I still can't figure out if those overlapping names are significant, but as someone overly familiar with the Bible's stories, I can't escape noticing those names and the characters.

In the Bible, Abraham cannot make a child with his wife Sarah, so she offers him her servant, Hagar as a surrogate. She conceives and gives birth to Ishmael, but Sarah, casts her out in jealousy. Eventually, Sarah miraculously conceives and gives birth to Isaac, who inherits everything of his father. He ends up with twin boys, Jacob and Esau. Jacob tricks Esau out of his inheritance and ends up fleeing from Esau to save his life. Jacob ends up with 2 sister wives and each of their nurses as concubines/surrogate mothers. In this book, Santiago Nasar is more of a conflation of Isaac and Jacob. The murderous twins are Pablo (Paul) and Pedro (Peter). It could possibly indicate Marquez's perception of Christian hatred toward Jews in general history, or maybe that of Columbian Catholics and Columbian Jews in particular. There were Jews who fled Hitler by coming to Columbia when the author was very young. The Columbian government actually halted immigration throughout most of Hitler's reign, from 1939-45.

I'm not claiming to have solved the deeper meaning of this novella, but it's my response to it.

This story is interesting, but not compelling. It's a good break from depressing historical reading, but it's not a book I'll keep on my bookshelf.

I was reluctant to start this one-even if I was being forced to read it for an assignment-because, really, how much can you do with a tiny little story like this where you know before you begin that Santiago dies? Well, a lot, apparently, because I ended up devouring it in a few hours and loving it immensely. It's written like a long newspaper article, with the narrator referring to investigations, personal witness accounts, his own experiences, and adding whatever details come his way. And the whole mystery of it is entirely captivating. Did he or didn't he do it?

The setting and culture were greatly described both with the plot and with the characters. I loved that it was so different from how different things are here and now. In the story, women have less rights, men have different responsibilities, there are obligations of religion and honor. Of course I don't agree with half of what went on and it annoyed me, as a person, but I was able to become fully immersed in the action and see things from their perspective.

I didn't like how everything was so jumbled; it would have been nice to get the information in a more convenient order, chronological or by way of the person being questioned. While this method did add to the intrigue and really had me working to think it over, I think I might have enjoyed it more if I could spend less time pondering the intricacies of how it was made up.

I recommend this book for people who like puzzles, only have a short amount of time for reading or who like fast and short reads, or who enjoy elaborate settings and don't need much action within the plot. I give Chronicle of a Death Foretold 4/5 stars. While some points of it frustrated me, I really enjoyed it overall, and will definitely come to read it again!

From the references to various historical events and the presence of a Model T Ford in one scene, I have the impression that this novelette was meant to take place in Colombia in the 1920's. The death to which the title refers is that of Santiago Nasar, that son of an Arab who come to Colombia in the early 1900's.

Santiago is a handsome young man from a wealthy family whose sad fate seems to have its source in his interest in the women of his town. I should note, however, that the town in which he lives is one where sexual indiscretions are so common and so well-known as to be hardly be worthy of note. Nevertheless, Santiago is destined to pay quite dearly when he is named as the one who had deflowered a working-class girl. Her other than virgin state comes to light on her wedding night, and with Santiago named as the cad responsible, her brothers resolve to kill him and restore the family honor. As her brothers are professional butchers they naturally decide to use their butchering knives to exact this revenge. They prepare to murder Santiago quite casually as they go into town to sharpen these knives for this purpose. As they make their preparations the two brothers also see fit to inform everybody in town of their intentions.

Few people in town take the intentions of the usually cheerful brothers seriously, however. Although Santiago often goes about armed with a deadly .357 Magnum revolver, on the morning following the wedding of the butchers' sister he ventures forth from his house unarmed--partially because he was not properly informed of the brothers' intentions to kill him. He is informed of the plot against him at the house of his fiance, but seems unable to grasp the impending danger and ignores the offer of his intended's father to supply him with a rifle. In the end the unarmed Santiago is found by the brothers outside the locked door of his own house, where he is gruesomely dispatched.

An interesting aspect of this book is its cultural milieu. What I found particularly interesting was the Arab community in Colombia of which Santiago Nasar is a part. I read that during the 1880's to early 1900's Lebanese Maronite Christians immigrated to Columbia to escape persecution by the Turks, Arab Muslims, and Druze in their home country. It is therefore ironic that many characters in this book refer to Santiago as a "Turk."

I have read "Love in The Time Of Cholera," "Of Love and Other Demons," and "Memory of My Melancholy Whores" by Garcia Marquez. However, this particular book kind of made me impatient. From a conceptual stand point, and in terms of technical style of writing, I must say this book had a serious potential to be a superbly enjoyable story. However, I found many ingredients typical of Garcia Marquez, as if he is following a steady formula--the same imagery of magic realism coming and going in varying degree. His characters behave almost in the same fashion, given the similar setting, no matter what the title is--the affairs of passion, corruption, joy, crime, even the weather, all repeat somehow. I had a separate expectation from this mini novel, but despite its short-story styled ending with few mysteries unrevealed or few questions answered, the explanation behind the brutal murder's possibility of consummation seems very lame. I mean the entire town had to be a town of weird, dumb people to let this happen; and if it's possible for an entire town to be so ignorant as depicted by Mr Marquez, then the protagonist being one of them, his tragedy is not a tragedy at all--but a result of stupidity of the system where he lives. Tragedies have has to have contrasting backdrops--this contras is what makes a tragedy a tragedy. Of course one can argue if the author intended to write a tragic story or not; but it's unavoidable to notice that the whole story revolves around the fact that how a death, so preventable, did not get prevented--that a man was killed despite everyone's being aware of the killers and their intentions, hence, I feel the need to call it a story of tragedy, even if the author himself intended it to be otherwise. But when an improbable thing happens in a similarly improbable setting, the contrast between normal expectations and reality as is vanishes, and so vanishes the so called "thing"'s quality to be a tragedy.
So, I could not figure out what the story was trying to tell me.
It is an unfinished work by a great storyteller.

A murder mystery in reverse, Marquez tells the story of the events leading up to the death of Santiago Nasar after the fact. The narrator speaks to everyone in Santiago's town and tries to understand how, with so many people knowing the murder was going to take place, no one managed to keep it from happening.

Translated by Gregory Rabassa from its original Spanish the book is written in beautiful language that flows from page to page. Every character is given their own, unique voice and add to the novel's color. It's always hard to tell how much translation has changed the meaning of the text in its original language but Rabassa seems to do a good job of keeping the Spanish character of the novel intact while translating the text into English.

As far as plot goes there doesn't seem to be much happening in this book. You know Santiago is dead and who killed him very quickly, and the reason he was killed comes out shortly after that. Much of what this book has to say has to be read between the lines. It's a book that raises a lot of questions about the morality of an entire culture as well as why things happened the way they did, and if it's fate or coincidence that drives our lives.

For such a short book Marquez pays close attention to detail. Even with the length of the novel he makes sure the reader can see and feel clearly every detail of the town and the house in which Santiago lives. The place is vibrant, colorful, and almost tangible and Rabassa has done an excellent job of making sure these things stay alive in the English translation.

Writing at its best, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, is written beautifully with as much to say within the text as there is between the lines.

Way different from the broad and rambling One Hundred Years of Solitude, this is an intensely and tightly focussed book, focussed on one event: the murder of Santiago Nasar in a small town somewhere in Marquez's mythical Caribbean geography.

We are told in the first sentence that "they" are going to kill him. After a while we learn who "they" are, then after another while why. But the actual event doesn't happen until the last pages. The rest of the book moves between the events leading up to the murder, and its aftermath.

Short, at 143 pages -- but I can remember when that was a typical length for, at least, a genre novel! -- the book does its job with no extraneous detail. There is plenty of detail: only none of it is (to my mind) extraneous.

And the book is fully realistic, with none of the liminal magic of OHYoS. Indeed, it is brutally so, and the description of the murder itself is decidedly not for the weak of stomach.

If I had read it when I was younger I believe I would have found it harrowing. In my dotage as I am, I find it merely disturbing.

Don't even read this unless you've read the book. This review is not intended to help you figure out whether you ought to buy or read the book - of course you should, at least, read it - but to help some readers appreciate it.

Reviewing the plot: the beautiful Angela Vicario marries the powerful Bayardo San Roman, but on her wedding night she is found not to be a virgin; devastated, Bayardo returns her to her family. She tells her brothers, Pedro and Pablo Vicario, that her "perpetrator" was Santiago Nasar. The brothers, to preserve the family's honor, kill Santiago. At the time of the murder the narrator was sleeping with a prostitute - a prostitute whom Santiago loved. Twenty years later the narrator decides to return to the village and investigate the murder. Memories are faded and confused; people tell the narrator stories that contradict what they'd told an investigator so many years before - but the investigator's report has also been partly lost, damaged in a flood.

It's already obvious that the fallibility of memory is a central theme, for which the flood damage to the investigator's report is a simple (and perfect) symbol. The narrator even calls the village "forgotten." One level deeper, the fallibility and pseudo-infallibility of texts is being considered as well.

Another favorite for commentators is social class: Bayardo is able to choose his wife because of his money, and she is unable to reject him because of her poverty; Bayardo unintentionally kills an old widower by offering so much money for the man's beloved home; a poor young woman, Divina Flor, who works for Santiago, "feels herself destined for his furtive bed," as he molests her; and so on. However, the poor get their day: the lowly Vicario brothers kill the rich Bayardo, with the help of Divina Flor, who accidentally (ahem) collaborated by (mistakenly) telling Santiago's mother that he was in the house. In fact he was outside, so when the mother locked the door, she locked him out, putting him at the mercy of the killers.

Now it is obvious that the unreliability of the reports is another theme. Several characters report not believing each other, and nearly everyone here seemed to mention the inconsistent reports of the weather. But most interestingly to me there is no reason beyond typical readerly gullibility for so many readers to believe what Divina Flor (twenty years afterward) tells the investigating narrator about her mistake. Even if she made an honest mistake about Santiago being in the house, she or her mother could have warned him of the danger earlier in the day when he was eating breakfast, but they both chose not to. She tells the narrator that her mother wanted Santiago dead; but the only reason she can give for failing to warn him was that she was just a scared naive little girl: in other words, a virgin.

So we have every reason to suspect Divina Flor and her mother of active collaboration in the crime. Of course neither of them admit to it, but there are interesting problems with their testimonies. For instance, Divina says that before he was killed, she'd seen Santiago come in holding something she couldn't see clearly, but looked like a bouquet of roses. After he was repeatedly stabbed by the brothers, Santiago in fact does enter the house, carrying his intestines. Clearly the Divina of twenty years later has confused what she actually did see after the murder with what she claimed to see beforehand. But at the time, what had she seen? Perhaps - nothing?

Perhaps there are allusions to Oedipus Rex - the repeated reference to birds ~ the sphinx, blindness, foreigners, prophecy, the quest for truth, and as we'll see below, arguably even incest - though none are undeniable. But unlike poor Oedipus, Divina Flor triumphed over her unwanted fate ("Santiago's furtive bed"), even if she really did believe that Santiago was in the house. I'm saddened a little that most readers to not appreciate her triumph, and I'm forced to blame the rather incompetent narrator.

But is he so incompetent? A question far too few reviewers have asked is who in fact deflowered Angela. The narrator gives us pretty good reasons to believe that it was not Santiago, who seemed completely unaware of the crime and startled by the accusation. One obvious suspect looms large, and I am very disappointed that none of the reviewers here have suggested... obviously... the narrator.

Of course the narrator reports that (twenty years later) he asked Angela Vicario and she insisted that it was Santiago - calling the narrator "cousin" as she does so. But why trust him? Have we really read Fitzgerald, Kafka, Salinger, Nabokov and so on without learning to suspect the narrator? The narrator who is in some obvious ways the double of Santiago? We'll never know (and too few readers will ask) why the narrator decided to dig up all these memories twenty years after the fact, visiting several people now scattered around the country to get their testimony, and telling us how much work it was to find the investigator's report in the flooded basement of a government office in a distant city. Had he really nothing else to do?

Many other reviewers do a good job of discussing the significance of gender and especially "machismo." A few mentioned that, as with other GGM stories, there may be allegories or symbols of Colombian politics. But did anyone notice that Angela's birthday is a national holiday, or wonder why? And that her husband, with his melodramatically offended honor, is the son of a great national hero?

The last theme I'd like to mention is ir/rationality. The story is loaded with inconsistencies, explanations that don't make sense, unreasonable reasons. Santiago's mother can accurately interpret dreams provided she hasn't eaten yet, Santiago never used the back door of his house when he was dressed up, and so on. It is not clear whether the narrator is trying to make sense of such things, or is comfortable with their senselessness - were it clear, it would be less thematic.

This book deserves several reads because of its complex cleverness. I strongly disagree with reviewers who have called it heartbreaking, harrowing, shocking, brutal, and so on. People who feel that way need to read "Sophie's Choice," "Lolita," "A Tale of Love and Darkness," "In the Forest" and so on. This is not a criticism of the story. Those inaccurate adjectives are supplied by readers created in the image of the original investigator, who, although striving to find a rational explanation for things, merely glosses everything with romantic cliches: "the fatal door" is given as a typical example. The book is immensely clever - more so than most reviewers have appreciated - but rather than tragic (or any other typical romantic aspiration) it is essentially ironic, wry, darkly comic. It seems the final joke, one destined to be poorly appreciated, is on the reader.

Here is Marquez, the master storyteller, with the best implements of his trade. Say, it’s a story set in early 20th century Columbine town about the impossible and inexplicable murder of a man who is accused of soiling the honour of his best friend’s sister; In effect, it’s a story of an honour killing.

Like other stories of such kind this is not a self-conscious, grandiose, cheesy attempt at rousing public disgust over such crimes, or to label a whole cultural system as backward and barbaric which stories of this nature have a habit of doing.

It stands entirely on its own merit for the wonderful way in which Marquez unfolds the events to narrate the story of the murder - in a journalistic style, linking disparate incidents together to make an intelligible whole - while setting the story within the moral archetype of the time and society in which the event takes place. This objectivity sits at the heart of good writing and that’s what sets Marquez apart from a bevy of other writers expending words on the similar theme.

There's ambiguity with respect to the victim’s role: Was Santiago Nasar, our protagonist, guilty of soiling his friend’s sister’s honour or not? The story ends and despite many contradictory clues, the reader fails to arrive at a solid conclusion as to the culpability of the murdered. It may be seen as a flaw in the plot, or it may be its strength, that is, letting the reader decide for herself.

The most fascinating aspect of the story was how everyone in the town, in a series of perfectly aligned coincidences, got wind of the murder plot and yet nobody took it seriously enough to warn the victim till the last moment when it was too late.

In this faux journalistic tale, Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes about the lives of ordinary people in a small town along a navigable river. A well to do man with matrimony on his mind arrives and picks out the young lady of his desire. Marquez focuses in on the values of the people and their traditions as the wedding approaches. The man buys her a house on a hill in anticipation presumably that she will bear him many children and he will be a leading citizen of the town.

Such is the dream of this relatively fancy man from a bigger town.

The dream of the young woman who is to be the bride is a bit different. We cannot know for sure, but like young women everywhere she would prefer to marry for love. But how can a woman from a poor family that makes its living slaughtering pigs turn down such an offer?

She can't and yet because she does not fake the virginity with a red-stained sheet that could be hung out to dry on a clothes line the next morning for all to see, she allows circumstance to dictate her future. Her shamed brothers in essence do the same. They act because no one will stop them from acting.

Marquez tells the story as a journalist narrating an event from the past. The suspense in this short novel comes not from what happens to the man who stole the girl's virginity: we know that from the very beginning, but from the aftermath and from the details of how the events transpire. What is easy to miss (and I missed it at first) is that brothers who believe they are duty-bound to perform the honor killing really wish to be stopped. In this we see the old ideas of the society being reluctantly continued by the people. They know there is a better way, but because they are small town traditionalists, they are powerless by themselves. Note that the bishop comes but doesn't stop. The Church itself does not help is perhaps the symbolic meaning.

And why doesn't the town act to stop the murder? Why were they all indifferent? Do we say that something like the disgrace of one family and what they do about that disgrace is something for them to decide alone, and that we should take no action in the affair, that we should let events run their course?

Marquez makes it clear that just about everybody knew what was going to take place. I see this as a passive acceptance of a way of life imposed upon a people by ancient custom and tradition. This is the way of human nature in a traditional society. This is a tragedy foretold but not forestalled. And note that the tragedy happens to both the man who is murdered and to his family and to the murderers and the family of the murderers.

Is an honor killing right? Clearly the law will punish the murderers, the town's people know; but perhaps there will be some leniency from a jury or a magistrate considering the nature of the crime. And no doubt the philandering man who took advantage of the young woman deserves at least in part what will happen to him. I wonder, however, if the man had been a popular person, a younger person, would everyone have stood by and let him be slaughtered?

Note that the young woman herself had the power to name a name and she did. She could have refused. She could have lied.

Still another thing to note, and this reveals an unavoidable artificiality to the story: some women lose their hymen not through the act of intercourse, but through some sort of mishap or even through the normal rough and tumble course of growing up. There are many women who have lost their hymens who are nonetheless virgins. She could have claimed that something like that was the case. She may not have been believed but at least the man who had stolen her virginity would not have died.

Note too that Marquez is careful from the very beginning of the story to show us that Santiago Nasar was a womanizer and a man who would take advantage of the maid or the cook's daughter. In this way we are predisposed not to like him. Undoubtedly the town in general felt the same way. Clearly the young woman had been hurt by this man.

What Marquez has done in this short novel is examine a tragic event and show the reader not just the consequences but the entanglement of perspectives and values that led to the tragedy.

Well, the clue's in the name: Garcia Marquez carpets his hero's final morning with warnings, omens, secrets held in plain sight, reluctant assassins, and the kinds of just-missed opportunities usually found in the penultimate scene of a Shakespeare tragedy, but his death still speeds inevitably towards him. Narrated looking back from years later, the forces at play in this novel(la) are two sides of the same coin, memory and fate, and there's no real contest about which is the stronger. A perfect intro to this Nobel laureate for anyone who's confused about whether they're allowed to like "Cholera" (because paedophilia) and/or doesn't want to spend literally* a hundred years reading "One Hundred Years"**.
*Not literally.
**Though if you have read "One Hundred Years", see if you can spot where one of its characters makes a cameo-by-reference.

Let me begin with a warning that I am going to discuss this book in some detail and will mention several key plot details. If you want to remain spoiler free, do not read my review. Just take my word that this is an absolutely brilliant book and that if you love great literature, you will almost certainly love this.

One of the biggest gaps in my reading is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a cap that I am currently attempting to close. I have read his two most famous novels, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE and LOVE IN A TIME OF CHOLERA, but until this short book nothing else. My plan in the next couple of months is to read seven or eight of his most important works, and this was the first book toward that end.

CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD is apparently simple but deceptively complex. The tale it tells is simple. A bridegroom on his wedding night discovers that his bride is not a virgin and renounces their marriage. Her mother wheedles out of her the name of her violator and her brothers, in order to restore family honor, vow to kill the person their sister named, Santiago Nasar, a half Arab who is a young but affluent resident of their Caribbean village. The narrator of the tale, a friend of the murdered Santiago Nasar, later investigates and decides that it is unlikely that he deflowered the girl.

The story contains a critique of not only honor killing, but the stupidity of social systems based absurd social values. The narrator notes that some regard the one true victim in the tale to be the bridegroom, who supposedly was dishonored by being deceived by his bride's virginity. We in the United States find this glorification of virginity - indeed, the fetishizing of it - baffling. Or do we? In some fundamentalist communities we see daughters pledging their virginity to their fathers. Most Americans will find this just as perplexing as a bridegroom being able to annul a marriage because his bride's hymen was not intact. And while we in America find honor killing to be unacceptable, a majority of our citizens remain in favor of state-sanctioned execution, which is viewed as barbaric by most other advanced nations.

This system of honor drives all the events in the book. The bridegroom rejects his bride because of this sense of violated honor, and we learn later that he never truly recovers and in fact many years later, a broken man, returns to his wife are both in early middle age. The brothers have no real desire to kill Santiago Nasar and even hope that someone will intervene, believing that being frustrated in their attempt would satisfy the demands of honor. That they are not prevented is somewhat of a quirk, since many want to intervene but fail for one reason or another. Santiago meanwhile, unaware of being accused of being the deflower of Angela Vicario, goes about his business, living out the last few minutes of his life. Accepting the system of honor, no one has any real choice. Freedom of will is not at operation. The claim of some that many crimes are caused not by individuals but by the influence of society is viewed with ridicule. Here in this tale there is a sense in which the Vicario twins are not the ones responsible for the killing of Santiago Nasar, but their society. The powerlessness that grips each character is driven home as Santiago's murder is reenacted again and again in each chapter. Each chapter drives home the senseless of the whole affair.

One of the most fascinating things about the book is that we don't know who actually took the virginity of Angela Vicario. Whoever is was, they fail to loom as a figure of significance. We don't even know for certain why she names Santiago Nasar, though one can speculate that it is was because she was in love with him and felt spurned by his inattention. The Vicario brothers took their sister's claim as incontestably true and did not even allow Santiago an opportunity to deny the charges. While the murder of Santiago Nasar satisfied the demands of honor, it did not in fact punish her real lover. Justice was done within the honor system despite the wrong person being killed.

This is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking short novels that I have ever read. It has left me even more excited about exploring Garcia Marquez's books than I was before.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold was published in 1981, the year before Gabriel Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The story begins with 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 that the bishop was coming on." We readers know from the beginning that Nasar will die today. Each of the five chapters recount the events leading up to the murder, providing different perspectives and contradictory statements; there was not even agreement on whether it rained, and if so, how much.

Angelo Vicario is discovered not to be a virgin on her wedding night. Under pressure she reveals that Santiago Nasar had been her lover, and her two brothers reluctantly carryout Nasar's murder to recover the family honor. The narrator doubts whether Nasar was Angelo Vicario's actual lover. We never learn for certain.

Pablo and Pedro Vicario make no secret of their plan, and appear (at least from some accounts) to be almost waiting for someone to intervene, but no one steps forth. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is an example of magical realism that is also characteristic of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's highly respected novels One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. The inexorable unfolding of events, implausible given the widespread knowledge of the planned murder, resists natural explanations.

The partially contradictory, incomplete accounts did leave me with unanswered questions, and yet the denouement (at the beginning, rather than the end?) is not unsatisfying. There continues to be enough puzzlement on my part, however, that I find myself every few years returning to Chronicle of a Death Foretold. This brilliant, deliciously ambiguous novella can probably be best compared with Faulkner's remarkable The Sound and the Fury, or Joseph Kafka's disturbing short story, The Trial.

García Márquez did not win the Nobel Prize for Literature and become Colombia's favorite son by accident. This book, among his best, anchors his reputation as one of Latin America's greatest novelists.

Chronicle is vintage García Márquez from the programmatic opening sentence, 'On the day that they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar rose at 5:30 in the morning to wait for the boat on which the bishop was to arrive.' Doomed Santiago-who is probably innocent of the outrage that led to his murder by a bride's twin brothers-collapses dead on his kitchen floor in the book's closing line.

In between, the author treats us to the most unlikely turn of events, as everyone in the village except the dead man walking knows that his end is near but is too distracted by meaningless details, fascinated by the unfolding scenario, or rendered inert by fate to intervene. There may somewhere live a wittier and more ironic writer than García Márquez, but it would take a lifetime to find her. Time is better spent with this novel and one or two of the author's other short works. Leave his competition outside in the rain. I recommend El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (The Coronel Has No One to Write to Him) as a companion to Crónica, for there one encounters the dignified wait that is the lot of the Latin American peasant, abandoned by the machinery of state in the distant capital but resilient against the desperation that would bring him low if his nobility gave pause.

Chronicle is García Márquez at his most absurd. His characters are what they are by destiny, incapable for the most part of imagining an alternative and immensely colorful-against all odds-as they recite their lines and stare inconstant and inert from the shadows of their shops as Nasar stumbles blithely towards his excruciating demise. Only the narrator and the twin assassins exert themselves as though capable of changing fate. For all his running after his friend Santiago, the former never catches up with him in time and nobody-try as they might-can be roused by the Vicario brothers to stop them consummating the nasty business that honor has thrust upon them.

We will never know why García Márquez' narrator returns twenty years later to trace the steps of a village full of protagonists, nor why he publishes a chronicle of the fatal proceedings. But be glad he did. Read this book in Spanish if you can, in English if you must.

Rarely does a celebrated writer remain so utterly accessible to his reader, his sparkling prose so natural and receivable to eye and ear. Give this man two Nobel Prizes, or three. Four would be few.

Even while placing the climax of the novel in the very title, Gabriel Garcia Marquez manages to write a gripping little detective tale set in an otherwise unremarkable town. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, an anonymous narrator weaves the story of a single murder that occurred despite the fact that everyone in town seemed to know that it was going to happen. The novel satirizes traditional small-town values of community, religion and honour. Despite the fact that the town prides itself on its religious involvement and excitedly prepares for the arrival of an important bishop, its citizens still allow, through inattention or callousness, for one of their own to be murdered. Through a combination of a non-omniscient narrator and the writing style, the reader might have trouble drawing the line between where ambiguity has an answer and where a mystery was intentionally left in. The book is a fairly short and fast-paced read, and I think that most readers would enjoy this critical look at human relationships.

Masterful storytelling.
Reads well in translation; English.
This book is in my top two favorite books of all time.
How Marquez bends a sentence through time, weaves a narrative
is the pinnacle of language artistry

forever,
Annie

Annie Lanzillotto
author of "L is for Lion: an italian bronx butch freedom memoir" SUNY Press
and "Schistsong" BORDIGHERA Press

www.annielanzillotto.com

L Is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir (SUNY series in Italian/American Culture)
Schistsong (Via Folios)
Blue Pill
Carry My Coffee (Live)
Eleven Recitations

"Chronicle of a Death Foretold" is the fable of Santiago Nasar's murder. Set in a Caribbean village, the story opens with an introduction of its main character and the revealing of his fate. As Marquez moves the story forward by telling it backwards, we learn of the motive behind, and who is responsible for, Santiago's death. We also learn of the number of people in the village who knew of Santiago's fate but failed to do anything to prevent it. A combination of machismo, honor and saving face is at the root of the murder. People's unwillingness to get involved, apathy about the murders' intentions, and distractions by the less important allowed the blood to flow. In this sense, the novel becomes a metaphor for the greater social conditions that exist in the world. When everyday people are silent in the face injustice, apathetic about the plight of others or not alert enough to see when danger looms, well, the worst of anything can happen. In this story, the villagers' inaction resulted in the death of a man. In world affairs, people's inaction can cause the death of thousands.

This is a very clever story. Although short in length, "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" is full of valuable insights into the human condition. Marquez populates the story with an international cast of characters, each contributing in some off handed way to the demise of Santiago. Although a chronicle in title, this novel does not hold to any chronological sequencing. Scenes are arranged in a way that allows the author to reveal important information at the precise time that it's needed. In contrast, the story is a rendering of facts (in a literary sense of course) un-interpreted by the chronicler. All interpretation is by the reader. This is a very enjoyable read. Highly Recommended!

I recently read this novella as an introduction to the writing of Marquez as one the store reviewer suggested, and while I agree with most of the excellent conclusions rendered by other reviewers of this work, I must say that I did not find reading this book all that fulfilling or enjoyable. I want to like Marquez, since seemingly the whole world does upon reading him, but I labored through this book without feeling any great sympathy or concern for any of its characters.
Anyone who has read the synopsis of the story above knows what it is about. Set in a small Colombian town, the novella chronicles the murder of one of the town's leading citizens, Santiago Nasar, by two twin brothers who are advised that Nasar has brought dishonor on the family by "deflowering" their sister. The twins' sister, Angela, is brought back home on her wedding night when her husband learns she is not a virgin, after she abandons any plans for trying to keep her past a secret. Angela advises her family that it was Nasar who slept with her in the past, and thus her brothers set out, while telling the whole town of their intentions, to avenge their sister's loss of innocence.
The story is narrated over 20 years after the fact by a friend of Nasar, who has supposedly read investigative files and interviewed all persons involved in the case, and the book reads much like an extended newspaper story of the murder and its aftermath. The plot is non-linear, you know about the murder from page one of the story and you obtain details of Nasar's autopsy, and of the twins' subsequent incarceration while awaiting trial, before you are given the disturbing details about the crime in the last few pages.
The is much irony and fatalism here, as the victim Nasar is seemingly the only person in town who is ignorant of the brothers' plans to kill him, leading the reader (as well as the narrator) to wonder aloud whether he really did sleep with Angela. Marquez reveals how numerous persons in the town had opportunities to stop the crime, or at least to try and warn Nasar and hide him, but a pervading sense of the inevitable leads the victim to his unsuspecting doom. Perhaps the non-appearance of a bishop, who was supposed to visit the town with great fanfare but who never disembarked from his boat on the day of the murder, is meant to symbolize the inability of the Church to prevent cruelty amidst a village with an antiquated sense of honor.
All in all, while Marquez writes skillfully with a prose style that is neither stark nor overly wordy, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed that I wasn't more wrapped up in the story. Perhaps I had expected too much based on the abundance of praise the author has received here.

Yet another gem from Marquez. I'll admit though, at first I was a little bored with it, but I think that is more because I just read three novellas by him in two days.
Chronicle is basically the story of a man who wants to find out just why the town in which he lived allowed Nasar to be killed by the Vicario twins, even though they made their intentions clear to almost everybody, and with hours of warning. The story is filled with Marquez' trademarks: sadness, solitude, love and effortlessly magical sentences that just seem to come out of nowhere and are beautifully nestled between more mundane efforts.
I think, at its heart, that this story is about how it is easy for everyone to just let someone else handle the problem, and that until something happens, it is almost impossible to believe that it will, no matter how much evidence there is before you. Literally over a dozen people had ample and easy opportunity to warn Nasar before the event, and in fact many were going to, but then they were distracted by something that seemed more important at that instance but in fact wasn't, and the chance was lost.
It is interesting the way he wrote it. As usual, he jumps back and forth through time, but it is easy to keep a handle on what is happening because, for the most part, the events in the past (Nasar's murder) are spoken about, whereas events in the present (roughly twenty years after the death) and described. It is worth noting that almost everybody who had the opportunity to prevent Nasar's death, and those intimately related to him, they all have lived the rest of their life in sadness, and so has the town in which the murder occurred. It is almost as though the very town itself has to pay for the crime, not the murderers themselves, they get off scott free (mostly).

While Gabriel Garcia Marquez shows is impeccable at filling his lengthy novels with a wide variety of important aspects of the human experience, his novellas show that the Columbian master also has a knack for rooting out a single facet of human nature and exploring it in a certain and direct manor. One of his best novellas is undoubtedly 1981's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, in which an entire town is an accessory to murder. The Vicario twins' sense of family pride is brutally wounded when their sister, Angela, is returned home on her wedding night because the groom had discovered that Angela's virginity had already been broken. When their sister identifies a local bachelor named Santiago Nasar as her first lover, the brothers sharpen their knifes for the next morning. As they set out to complete their gruesome task, the twins are not at all secretive of their plans, making references to the forthcoming homicide in friendly banter with their fellow townspeople. Yet none of those with whom they speak carry out any attempt to prevent the slaughter. Some doubt the Vicarios will actually go through with the slaying, some consider such conflicts of honor something not be meddled with by an outsider and some are downright apathetic to the peace of their community and the safety of their neighbor. Mr. Marquez builds a shocking, yet utterly conceivable scenario in which members of a cultured society are given amble opportunity to prevent an appalling evil yet do not even try (One need only remember the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York City to understand the universality of this subject matter). In less than one hundred and fifty pages, Chronicle of a Death makes the reader rethink his or her assumptions concerning societal decency and community responsibility.

Garcia Marquez once again delights his readers in this short novel, written with a lot of irony and humour.
The story is an account that presents a typical behaviour of a 'macho society', where Santiago Nasar gets killed by the two Vicario brothers as a way to defend the "honor" of their sister, who they discover was not a virgin on the night of her wedding.
 
Most of the novel deals with the detailed actions of the Vicarios to kill Nasar. This provides the background for the story, which turns out to be more about the people of a small Caribbean village with their morals, manners, and way of thinking and perceiving the world. It makes for a story that is at once very captivating and challenging.
 
It is intriguing to note that everybody in the story knows that Nasar was to be killed but nobody took the action to prevent the murder. Instead of warning poor Nasar, the villagers gathered around to watch the exciting and horrible event.
 
This book is different from the best known style of Garcia Marquez, magical realism. This time the story is more traditional, but nonetheless carried along by the charm of a master story teller.
 
The events and the details unfold little by little unfold, centered on an unanswered question: was Nasar indeed the one who took Angela's virginity? This creates a kind of suspense that makes the book even more compelling, leaving room for speculation.
This is simply a great book, well written, compact, and definitely not to be missed by anyone wishing to experience another piece of Garcia Marquez's talent. The journalistic approach of telling the events - combined with the satire towards religion, legal system, morals, and the irony - combine to make the book a wonderful piece of literature.

Presented outside the dreamy haze of his signature magical-realism, Garcia Marquez' storytelling here is direct yet powerful. The plot is simple, but as the details of the morning unfurl - information repeated but expanded and enriched throughout - a complex community emerges, full of secrets, regrets and humanity. Not a false note here, with writing that is rich in texture and emotion. The climax, which the reader knows is coming from the very first sentence of the book, still manages to shock and disturb. A memorable short novel by a master of language and story.

I believe that imagination is the particular faculty artists possess that enables them to create a new reality from the one they live in," writes Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Coming from the Caribbean, though, has made it virtually impossible for Marquez to depart from reality, even with liberal use of his imagination. Marquez claims, " . . . nothing has ever occurred to me, nor have I been able to do anything, that is more awesome than reality itself. The most I've been able to do has been to alter that reality." This seems an awesome claim after reading Chronicle of a Death Foretold, in which some episodes seem completely impossible. That impossible reality, however, is what, according to Marquez, gives Latin American writers the ability to create fantastic stories. The ambiguous Latin American setting of Chronicle of a Death Foretold is what gives Marquez the opportunity to use his imagination to create an altered version of his own magical reality.
The events that transpire in Chronicle of a Death Foretold hinge on the setting. Marquez is purposefully not very specific about the location or identity of the small Latin American town in which Santiago Nasar dies. He reveals that the population is small, which is very important to the plot progression. Marquez would not have been able to create the same story in the middle of a bustling city full of strangers; he needed a small intimate setting that would allow him to twist reality within reasonable bounds. One of the elements of the plot that best exhibits magical realism is the fact that everyone in the town knows Nasar is going to die without Nasar finding out until the last minute. It seems impossible for everyone to know someone is going to die without the future victim having any knowledge of his fate. Marquez has "alter[ed] reality," but made his alterations more plausible by his choice of setting.
First, Marquez presents the town as being very small and intimate. Consisting of many large and intermarried families, the town is filled with friends and family, who would spread news of Nasar's doom relatively quickly. There is also the shop in which the Vicario brothers sit to wait for Nasar. Since the town is small, it is reasonable that many of the town's residents would pass through the same store on their morning's rounds and see the two men. This makes it more plausible that everyone might hear a piece of gossip within a couple hours.
Marquez also chooses to make the residents of the town relatively poor and not disclose the exact era during which the events occur. Through these two choices of setting development, Marquez makes it possible to remove the presence of automobiles, save the one brought in by Bayardo San Román. This lack of automobiles explains why everyone in the town walks everywhere, and lends further credence to the fact that everyone knew Santiago Nasar was going to die. Marquez's choice of setting has allowed him to create a reality that seems impossible, yet somewhat plausible, all at the same time.
The choice of setting only makes more reasonable a story line that otherwise seems impossible. Marquez may have created a setting in which it is reasonable to believe that an entire town would know a man was going to die soon. Even Marquez, though, cannot offset the mystery as to how Nasar himself could not know his fate. In his essay, Marquez speaks of "Latin America's impossible reality," so in the end perhaps it is enough to know that Chronicle of a Death Foretold is set in Latin America. There is nowhere else that such an impossible reality could be possible.

The popular notion is that Love in the Time of Cholera may be Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's best book, and that One Hundred Years of Solitude is the one that made him famous. But what many people don't know is that Chronicle of a Death Foretold is the book that won Mr. Garcia-Marquez the Nobel Prize.
Sure, that's mostly a quirk of the calendar. But the book was Mr. Garcia-Marquez's most recent publication when the Nobel committee sat down to discuss who deserved the award for literature in 1982. And though it's hard to imagine anyone on the committee nominating the venerable Colombian as a result of this slim volume, it is easy to conclude that nothing here would make them second guess their votes either.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold has everything that makes the work of Mr. Garcia-Marquez such a joy, albeit in abbreviated form. Its pages contain great characters and names, unusual events made believable by the storyteller's skill, a mysterious storyline, a surprising complexity.
And because of its diminutive size and straightforward style, it's a great way to sample the Mr. Garcia-Marquez's work for the first time.
If you do that and enjoy the story, try News of a Kidnapping in addition to the two great novels mentioned above. The two -- News of a Kidnapping and Chronicle of a Death Foretold -- are the two novels that employ a style that harkens back to Mr. Garcia-Marquez's early days as a journalist, using interviews and investigation as a base for a fictionalized reconstruction of real events recounted with the same style that earned the author his reputation.

This was a very interesting story where a murder is revealed upfront; however, it's the details of the event that matter, and the author provides a great story going through all the intricacies while driven implicitly by a simple question: why wasn't this killing stopped? It seems that everyone had a valid excuse, including the killers who did what they could to get someone to stop them. Evidently everyone was caught in a societal role or position they couldn't break out of. This type of complex intra-community relationship among the characters is also present in the author's other great book, "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

However, the writing seemed a little stiff. For example, the first and last names are always written out completely, exerting unnecessary formalism onto a short book with a precise plot. In general, the sentence structure throughout the book lacked a fluent flow, perhaps due to the translation.

Like other books I've read by the author (the others being "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Memories of My Melancholy Whores"), this book is very enjoyable and very recommended.

A man returns to the town where the murder of Santiago Nasar took place 27 years before. Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning on the 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, that within the hour, her 21 year old son would be dead. Why did the twins want to kill the proprietor of The Divine Face, the ranch he had inherited from his father? Why did they chose that particular morning, when the bishop was due to visit the village? Why wasn't Santiago Nasar aware of the fact that somebody had shoved an envelope under the door of his house with a written document warning him that he was going killed, stating in addition the place, the motive and other quite precise details of the plot? How could the murder have been committed despite the fact that nearly all the inhabitants of the town knew that it was inevitably going to happen? The investigation of this murder takes the quality of a hallucinatory exploration into the past. The narrator's quest for the truth leads him into the darkness of human intentions, a truth that perpetually seems to slither away. This small masterpiece is one of the greatest classics of the 20th century.

The English translation (by Gregory Rabassa) of this slim "novel" by Nobel Laureate Garcia Marquez was first published in 1983. An excellent example of non-linear storytelling, the story begins with a declaration that Santiago Nasar is about to be murdered. Despite this beginning, this novella-length book is anything but direct. Garcia Marquez takes us on a circuitous route through the circumstances leading up to, surrounding, and following Nasar's death. As in most of the author's work, fate, chance, and the foibles of characters determine the outcome. Irony abounds: the dishonored bride becomes obsessed with the suitor she once disdained; the brothers who are honor-bound to kill Nasar don't want to carry out the duty, and yet do. Honor becomes dishonor, and vice versa. What is most interesting about this work is its spareness, especially in comparison to his earlier One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I highly recommend all of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's books. Although I wouldn't suggest Chronicle of a Death Foretold as an introduction to the author's work, it stands well as its own as a powerful, satiric tale of dishonor and the rituals that enable it.

Not quite a mystery because the readers know who the murderers are on the se3cond page, Garcia-Márquez writes in his classic newspaper-like narrative style to detail the events leading up to the crime. In a small village with all of the suspicious activity and the murderers even making threats against our primary character (dead on the first page) the narrator is astounded that nobody stopped the crime. Garcia-Márquez does an excellent job of showing different sides to give a well-rounded perspective of events.
Garcia Márquez is one of the best writers of recent times. This book should be heralded as one of his classics for its straightforward style that does not leave out any details. By the end, the reader feels as if he knows the characters personally. Garcia-Márquez accomplishes so much in such a relatively short amount of space.
Why 5 stars?:
This book gets top marks for its captivating series of events and creative storytelling. The characters are so colorful and so lifelike that the reader will feel as though s/he could converse with them. Anyone interested in being "well-read" or with an interest in world literature should give this book a chance - you'll be hooked on the first page.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the most genuinely artistic of 20th century authors. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" was the first of his books that I read and while I loved the story there were times when the sheer size, scope and density of that work was very intimidating. It wasn't until my second reading that I was able to fully digest the power of the book and appreciate the consumate artistry it embodied. For those who want a little bit of a lighter introduction to Marquez, "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" is a good place to look.
The story is deceptively simple: A young girl in a South American village (a setting almost all Marquez's works share) is married and it is found that she has already lost her virginity. Her brothers are then bound by honor to kill the man responsible, an act they have no interest in doing but do nonetheless because no one will stop them. I am giving nothing away here, all the details of the story are revealed in the first few pages. What elevates this simple story to the grand level of all Marquez works is the brilliant structure and execution. Marquez succeeds, as always, in putting a fresh spin on a timeless plot.
Marquez gives us the events leading up to the murder from several different angles and with each different angle a new wrinkle in the fabric of the story unfolds. What we learn is that there scarcely a person in the whole town who could not have helped rescue the victim from his early end. The killers did not hide their mission, on the contrary they announced it to whoever crossed their path and delayed the doing of the deed until they could not wait any longer. It is this fact which sticks with the reader of the book long after he has finished reading and Marquez explores the question of responsibility at length.
I recommend that "Chronicle of Death Foretold" be read as an intro to Marquez and if you like it then move on to the more imposing works like "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Autumn of the Patriarch". For those Marquez fans who have not "Chronicle of Death Foretold" yet, I encourage them to do so right away. It easily hold up to his best material, even within its smaller framework.

Nasar dies. Gabriel Garcia Marquez in this short, quick read novel, tells you that Nasar dies in the opening chapter. He is murdered, everyone knew he was going to be murdered, no one did enough to prevent it, and it was as if a death foretold was executed before their own eyes. The narrator tries to piece together the events and conversations that occured before and after the murder. Several stories are revealed, many incomplete ones, half-forgotten memoirs of those who saw it all happen. The novel is written with less of imagery and metaphor than Marquez usually incorporates in his writing, and so in comparison to the rich language and imagination on display in his other novels, this is more down to earth, matter of fact kind of piece.

Marquez indeed is one of the best novelists of our time. This story is harrowing in reminding us of how most of us fail to act and prevent tragedies that we could easily prevent. The bride who is returned on the night of her marriage, the brothers who must kill of save her honor and the description of merry making before the murder all add their share of spice to this tale.

I do not like to give 5 stars, but this novel is so good on so many levels. Besides being just a great page-turner, the author demonstrates a few very unique and engaging storytelling techniques:
The gimmick of the book is that the main character's death is "foretold" from the beginning. Readers know from the opening chapter that Santiago Nasir is going to die, and when, and why, and by whom. The story generates suspense, not because we do not know the outcome, but because we see the inevitable happening and feel powerless to stop it. Like watching a train wreck, we cannot keep from staring, and we feel guilty when we enjoy it so much.
The murder is also foretold to other characters. Almost everyone in the book has the opportunity to intervene but for a variety of reasons-apathy, malice, fear, coincidence-do not. Marquez heaps irony upon irony, mingling both comedic and violent scenes, highlighting the role of fate in our lives. On another level, this novel is also a scathing indictment of Latino "machismo", a culture that turns two young boys into killers to protect their sister's honor and makes an entire town of bystanders accessories to the fact.
The narrator tells his story in a pseudo-journalistic style, through interviews and flashbacks. This allows Marquez to tell and re-tell scenes from different vantage points, jumping back and forth in time, adding details and exposing layer after layer of hidden motives. By the time we actually see the murder scene, we already know all the actions that led up to it and the repercussions that will result.
Although Marquez is known for his use of magical realism, this tale is told without the use of the supernatural, excepting one small incident near the end, when a young girl sees an apparition of Santiago climbing the stairs to his bedroom, just before he is murdered outside her door.

I enjoyed this novel and found it paced nicely with an increased rhythm at the end. However, for me, there was a tension of frustration. I knew there could be no resolution of the uncertainties (who had dishonoured Angela before her wedding? why was Nasar prepared to accept this? who was he protecting? why did Angela point at Nasar anyway?) because for these to be revealed at the end would have required the author to have engaged in the device of having the narrator withhold information from us. It may, in fact, have been more satisfying as a STORY had some answers been given. But in the almost journalistic (albeit a sophisticated journalistic) style adopted by the author this would have been unacceptable. So why did the author adopt this style? Perhaps, as EM Forster claimed with 'A Passage to India' the author didn't actually know the truth of the matter. The narrative helps in the telling of the story in a manner that disallows a resolution - the reader has to speculate just as the narrator has. But this did gnaw away at me as I read the novel and compromised my enjoyment somewhat.

The book is about how a man named Santiago Nasar being murdered. It takes you through the morning before his death and how everyone in town knew it was going to happen but he was never told. Two brothers kill him for taking their sisters virginity before being wed to another man. The brothers went around town telling everyone about how they were going to kill him. As Santiago went into town he was chased out by the brothers and they killed him brutally and then fled town. I think the author, Gabriel García Márquez, accomplished a great deal of foreshadowing without fully spoiling the end of the book. Although the reader knows Santiago is going to die they don’t know exactly how till the end. Personally I really enjoyed the book and was very surprised that no one told him he was going to be murdered not even the priest. I would highly recommend this book to someone that is a good reader mainly because it is a difficult read. But, besides that it is a very good book that I would encourage everyone to read. While reading that book it was hard for me to keep up with what was happening. I thought a big part of the book was to pay attention to omens because Santiago saw many dreams before it happened and all the weather was a factor.

This book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is different from his other books. On the surface, it's a thriller, in the middle of which is a homicide. Supposedly, a very ordinary story, expect for one small detail. The ending of the story is well known from the first sentence. The murderers tell everyone in the village about their intention to murder Santiago Nasar. Soon enough, the rumor spreads around and the entire village knows about it. And yet, despite the widespread awareness in the village of the Vicario brothers' plan to murder Nasar, he is still murdered. This is a very witty and full of humor of book. Marquez's writing is very lively and lucid, and ought to be enjoyed by any of Marquez's fans out there.

I loved One Hundred Years of Solitude; the first time I read it I immediately started over from the beginning. Having just read Chronicle of a Death Foretold, though, I must admit I like this novel even better. (Now I'm reading Love In the Time of Cholera-- woo-hoo!)
Though a rather short novel, the scope of Chronicle of a Death Foretold is amazing. It describes the last three days before the death of Santiago Nasar, a young bachelor of an unnamed small village in South America. When Bayardo San Roman discovers that Angela Vicario, his bride, is not a virgin on their wedding night, she is returned to her family's home in disgrace. Her brothers demand to know who her seducer was, and when she reveals that it was Santiago Nasar, they vow to avenge the dishonor. For three days, the brothers Pedro and Pablo march around town, ostentatiously sharpening their knives and announcing their intention of killing Nasar. While every villager is aware of this, out of cowardice, malice, or misunderstanding, not one tells him until it is too late.
With his characteristic hidden irony and unflinching frankness, Garcia Marquez explores the bystander effect, the rigidity of tradition and small town mores, and of course the inevitability (?) of fate.

"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..."

Thus begins this novel, published in 1981, a year before its author was awarded the Nobel.

The whole town knows that Santiago will meet his death on that day, but due to the townspeople's indifference and skepticism, as well as a series of strange coincidences which could very well be attributed to destiny, he does not find out until it is too late.

By means of three different perspectives (interviews to the townspeople, the investigation's official records and the narrator), the author recreates 27 years later the events of that day, finding out the motives for this heinous crime. The reader is left with a feeling of doubt regarding the motives, due to the constant doubts and comments of the different characters, who we are at times hesitant to trust. At times we are left with an impulse to yell out of frustration, "Why doesn't anyone say anything??!!", or, "Why the h*** did he make THAT choice??".

On the other hand, it is unovoidable to feel some degree of compassion towards the murderers, who hesitate from the beginning in commiting this crime, which they regard as their duty. It is over and over stated that they "were searching for someone to stop them".

The gallery of characters and the way in which they are related to one another and to the events, makes this novel a quick and entertaining read in which the reader will find him/herself deeply inmersed from the very first page until the final sentence is uttered.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez weaves his usual magic around the tale of Santiago Nasar, a young man whose death is foreseen by all the residents of a small Carribean town.

Although not quite of the high standard of some of his more major works, 'Chronicle of A Death Foretold' is still home to much beauty. Within the interactions and passions of these townspeople we see a style that is commonplace with Garcia Marquez. An abilty to examine the minutia of the relationships of a small rural setting, while still being able to examine these same relationships in a more general human context. Garcia Marquez's ability to juxtapose love, passion, death and solitude is almost unrivalled.

Although not quite the greatest in his repertoire 'Chronicle of A Death Foretold' shows Gabriel Garcia Marquez's infinite humanity and magical realism in a quite favourable light.

I have been learning Spanish for 4 years now, and I have had my share at reading very boring and not very well written books in Spanish, and fortunately, some but very few good ones. One is Lazarillo de Tormes, and another is Cronica de Una Muerte Anunciada de Garcia Marquez. I have to say that even if i didn't know that Garcia Marquez was the man that made the literature of Columbia more noticed all over the world, and won the Nobel Prize for this work, and was most well known and famous for One Hundred Years of Solitude (which i hope to read in Spanish as well), i would have still been enamored into his style and what he represents in his works. Obviously, he's speaking for the culture and heritage of the people, and does it very well that from this book alone we learn a lot about it. At times i wish that in Spanish classes we could read books such as these that represent people in Spanish speaking countries in a better light. In other words, i wish we could read Spanish literature like this. I was surprised in how easily i followed this book without constantly relying on my Spanish dictionary. I highly recommend this book.

Marquez is South America's Faulkner, who explores Colombia the way Faulkner examined his "little postage stamp" in Mississippi. Chronicle is much more accessible, and briefer, than Marquez's other famous books, 100 Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. Anyone interested in Marquez may want to start here. Although the plot of Chronicle centers around a man's murder, it is not a mystery. As the title suggests, everyone knows about the impending death of a man accused of taking a young bride's "virtue." The murder is about as messy and as badly kept a secret as the killing in the movie "Bully." Marquez uses the murder as a way of indicting an entire community: almost everyone was either in on the killing or ignored it. Their complicity speaks volumes about the wickedness and indifference that is everywhere.

This novella just grabs you and sucks you in until you've finished the last page. I read this book for a book club and I think I enjoyed it even more because I had a chance to discuss the engaging language and themes with other readers. After all, there's so much to be said about characters such as Angela Vicario, whose mother said that her daughters were perfect because "any man will be happy with them because they've been raised to suffer." The depiction of women and love is not unique to the Latin American culture, but Gabriel Garcia Marquez's language makes it more vivid and captivating. The story is apparently based loosely on a true event, which makes it all the more intriguing. It's about a man whose imminent death is discussed throughout the town that he lives in, yet no one is able to stop it or at least warn him about it. I started reading it and got to around page 15 when I realized I wasn't paying enough attention and had to start over again from the beginning. I've heard of quite a few people getting off to a slow start with it. There are a lot of different names thrown at you, and though it's a chronicle, it's not chronological, so it's a story that needs to be read with some focus. Once you're in that focused mindset though, it's a quick read and I highly recommend it.

I hate to give less than a stellar review to Gabriel Garcia Marquez who was absolutely brilliant in his writing of "Love in the Time of Cholera," but this story was simply mediocre. It's set up as though there is some mystery to be solved by the end of the book. Unfortunately, the reader is left hanging.
The story is about a murder that is revisited 27 years later in an attempt to understand the reasons and circumstances, yet, the reader never learns anything. It promises a twist but never delivers.
It did have its moments as there is no doubt that Marquez is a wonderfully descriptive author, but I feel that overall, this is a story without consequence that in many ways leaves one saying, "EEhhhh...could've been better."
If you've never read Marquez, don't go for this one because of it's slim physique and somewhat catchy title...go for broke and read "Love in the Time of Cholera" or "One Hundred Years of Solitude"...it is within the pages of these books that the author truly shines.

From page one, the entire plot is known. But, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a magician. A man is killed, so what? People knew before the murder, people knew while he was being murdered and locked their doors, people knew after the murder and were complacent. Garcia Marquez writes this novel 26 years later to say, "Hey, your wrong, you screwed up, you should be full of rage". He shows how indifferent an entire town is, despite a cold-blooded murder in which man was stabbed 14 times. Do you think that it is implausible for a town to ignore a murder threat, allow a man to be murdered, and give the murders only 2 years in prison? Think again, it could happen anywhere, that it what makes his message so thrilling.

This is a beautifully crafted narrative that employs a number of techniques brilliantly. It is carefully stuctured and deploys the skills so typical for Garcia with care. The gradual revelation of the plot is so subtle that it is all too easy to miss for the careless reader, who must be on guard at all times. Rich in symbolism, hot and sultry. It is my guess that for those hoping to experience a racy read, this novel would disappoint. It is fairly slow and contemplative, purposely.
For me the art of the narrative was convincing, the story in itself probably less so.

I was expecting more from Marquez, this being my first foray into his writing. Technically good writing, but the story became repetitious and a tad cumbersome, which is odd in such a short novella. The constant replaying of bits and pieces from the eyes of too many characters became tedious, with little payoff at the end. Will give him another shot, though.

The circumstances surrounding the death of Santiago Nasar would be familiar to anyone who has witnessed those sectors of humanity where the concept of "honor" takes precedence over society, family, and life itself. You needn't search any farther than U.S. "saloon society" to find examples of men and women murdered over verbal or other insults, real or imagined. For me what makes this book unique is the author's dispassionate dissection of the crime in a style honed during his professional beginnings as a journalist in a country that has elevated journalism to an art and to this day continues to hold the profession in the highest esteem (while continuing to assassinate some of their finest journalists.) Some readers may overlook the universal appeal of the story, becoming mired in the descriptions of local/regional color. Colombia to this day has not changed. Arabs and other "immigrants" continue to provide much impulse to the arts and economy of the nation. Costeños (and Colombians in general) like the Vicario ("sicario!") brothers continue to talk smack, often letting their words get them into situations where they are forced to act in a violent manner or risk being killed themselves. "Shoot first and ask no questions" is the unwritten rule; accumulation of material wealth and the flaunting of the same take precedence over society and family values. Whether "Turks," "Arabs" or "Gringos," foreign elements continue to be blamed for the country's own deeply rooted social problems. Until Colombians of every stripe face the facts and accepts the consequences of their own actions and those of their fellow countrymen, the country will continue to recede into a netherworld of violence and stifled progress. It is truly ironic that those who would shed a tear over the death of Santiago Nasar would simply shrug or casually dismiss the daily slaughter of hundreds of their fellow citizens in a "civil war" devoid of ideology, that has everything to do with the pursuit of wealth and power at the expense of life, dignity and the pursuit of happiness. It's no mystery why Garcia Marquez, one of Colombia's most talented and renowned offspring has for several years lived in exile from his beautiful and fascinating but deeply troubled homeland.

I read this book piecemeal, but even though I would be away for it for days at a time, I had to come back -- and the last 30 pages or so made me drop everything to read them. *Chronicle* is one of those books that left me confused, but convinced of its beauty. Unlike a detective novel (a genre it is playing against), in which the people killed are devoid of personality -- in which we can barely bring ourselves to care about them -- the prolongued death of Santiago Nasar, as seen through everyone's eyes, in the end, through our eyes, becomes all the more shattering despite of and because we knew all along it would happen.

This book is a dreadfully boring stultifying exercise of seriousness. The Nobel Prize committee has once again proved that it is made up of monkeys and over educated intellectuals with bourgeois instincts for imitation leather and cheap wine at high prices.

The prose is muddy, thick with earnestness, gaudy with phony sincerity, and relentless as a snorer. Each sentence is a roadblock to the next creating a monotony of wrong turns to nowhere.

But worse is Marquez's notion that he is creating great literature. He dispenses any humor and he tells rather than creates emotion, which in this bowl of gruel is all unearned.

When the world exults mediocrity like this do not wonder why it is in such a mess. It rewards those who offer even less.

The novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez published by "Vintage International" is very interestingly and uniquely written. The author tells you the climax or main events first, then goes into details of the motives, actions, ideas, and emotions in later chapters.

The novel takes place in a small town in Colombia where everybody knows everything about everybody. The story starts with Santiago Nasar, the main character, waking up to go out to wait for the boat of the bishop. "On the day they were going to kill him, his mother thought he'd get his days mixed up when she saw him dressed in white. 'I reminded him that it was Monday,' she told me. But he explained to her that he'd got dressed up pontifical style in case he had a chance to kiss the bishop's ring"(Marquez 8). As everybody in the town woke up, crowds gathered towards the bishop's boat, however two men were waiting to kill Santiago, Pedro Vicario and Pablo Vicario, who are twins. One of the twins used to be in the army, and the other thought up the plan to kill Santiago Nasar. The twins were both still wearing their wedding suits from the night before, and held knifes wrapped in newspaper. They had a sister Angela who was married the day before. "Pedro Vicario, the more forceful of the brothers, picked her up by the waist and sat her on the dining room table. 'All right, girl,' he said to her, trembling with rage, 'tell us who it was.' 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. 'Santiago Nasar,' she said"(Marquez 47). This was the scene when the twins found out that Angela Vicario wasn't a virgin. This is also an excellent example of how Gabriel Marquez uses imagery to describe an idea as simple as thinking up a name. Most people going to the boat knew that the twins were planning on killing Santiago, but many people didn't think the twins would actually kill anybody. Angela had gone home because her husband discovered she wasn't a virgin, and Margrot, the narrators sister, can't figure out how Santiago was related in the mix-up, since many people didn't think he could do something like that. Before Margrot can warn Santiago's mother, he is already dead. Throughout the story, different views are shown to reveal the mysteries of the murder and whether Santiago was actually innocent or guilty.

I liked this book because of the great sense of suspense and trying to figure out who was right or wrong. "The truth is I didn't know what to do,' he told me. 'My first thought was that it wasn't any business of mine but something for the civil authorities, but then I made up my mind to say something in passing to Placida Linero.' Yet when he crossed the square, he'd forgotten completely. 'You have to understand,' he told me, "that the bishop was coming that day"(Marquez 70). This is a quote from an authority figure who had all the power to stop the crime from happening, however didn't. This showed how people didn't know whether killing Santiago was right or wrong, or if the twins should have killed him. I would personally recommend this book to anybody who likes to read short, well-written suspence or mystery novels. This book, however short, is not an easy reader and can be confusing at times. Many of the ideas are implied and easily missed if not paying enough attention to it.

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 Garc?a M?rquez 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 Garc?a 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 Garc?a M?rquez 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

i like this author and the way he writes...his characters seem to always be connected, but either way, this book is now one of my favorites...not only does the title catch your eye, but the story and characters make it so much more interesting and fascinating...he describes each encounter and event without really "describing" it, what i mean to say is, that just reading through you can almost understand the time period and what each character was like and even what the village was like as a whole...i would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys great reading...

A short, enthralling read by a masterful storyteller. Each page reveals new details about the unjustly murdered victim, the killers who do everything short of beg people to get involved, and witnesses whose complacencies, indecisions, or poor judgment lead Santiago to his fate. This is so beautifully written, and such a fun read. My only criticism was that it was far too short; I so wanted to continue reading about this little river town and its inhabitants.

Everyone in the town was in a state of nonexistence. A town of living ghosts. A moral conscience seemed completely absent in this town. The Bishop had only a fleeting and distant existence himself. This was a middle class town. Void of all real emotion. A town's collective moral conscience atrophied and diseased by their autonomy. They contributed only to their community and worked only to sustain it.

This story makes me angry and sad all at once. I'm angry that people could be so hypocritical and dumb. I'm sad because the only person in town with some color and strength succumbs to the town's mindless inhabitants.

I feel the behavior in this story could be replicated in any community where necessities are provided and personal growth undervalued.

Marquez creates the appearance of a murder mystery, when, in fact, he is writing a social drama. I think the novel's true protagonists are the Vicario brothers, who give society countless opportunities to stop them, and who desire to be free of their social obligation to avenge their sister's disgrace. The Vicario brothers are not the murderers of Santiago Nasar--the villagers who collectively ignore the brothers' warnings are. This is Marquez's ultimate message in this book--Nasar was killed by society, not the Vicario brothers.

A frighteningly plausible chain of circumstances keeps Santiago Nasar from escaping his death. Characters that could easily be YOUR friends and neighbors fail to warn him. It is the story of the sins of omission committed by an entire town, and the unwitting victims of an inescapable fate. Though his end is described in the beginning of the novel, somehow the author maintains suspense and intense interest by disclosing various details and twists until finally the reader is made to understand how such a death could take place.

It seems that in our present culture, the phrase "nothing is sacred," when attached to a movie or TV show, almost always indicates a push on the boundaries of good taste. This is why Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, was such a refreshing read-- the author mercilessly satirizes important institutions, such as religion and the honor code, and does so without using scatological humor as a handicap. The book does contain some "adult" moments, but Mr. Marquez deals with them in an appropriately adult manor, making them funnier than simply spewing language and graphic situations, hoping we will be shocked by the result.
In fact, the most startling parts of Chronicle were the ironic touches and the satire that Mr. Marquez is gifted at. Two brothers kill a man in broad daylight, with plenty of witnesses around, and they are found completely innocent in court. This is both a lampoon of the judicial system, which let them off, and the honor code, which was their ill-founded excuse for killing the man (there was no evidence even remotely linking Santiago Nasar, the murdered man, and his supposed de-virginizing of their brother's sister).
Waste and extravagance are characteristic of the church in Mr. Marquez' book. The bishop enjoys cockscomb soup, so local residents, anxious for the bishop's arrival, slice the cockscombs off the chickens and throw the rest of the chicken away. To add insult to irony, the bishop never even docks in their city, because the bishop "hates this town."
Yes, the novel contains violence, drunkenness, and prostitution, but Chronicle of a Death Foretold is not about these things, and how "shocking" they are to society. Mr. Marquez uses these subjects to depict concepts far more interesting; criticisms of our laws, customs, and opinions are what truly fuel this classic. Chronicle reminded me that there are far more lines to cross than simply those of good taste.

Watch Out for the Dogs!
by
Andrew Costello

(A translation from the original Spanish of a review of Gabriel García Márquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold)

In the wee hours of the morning following their wedding a groom returned the bride to her parents. There was a big problem. She was not virgin. The mother forced the bride to confess the name of the man responsible of her loss of honor. The two older twin brothers of the bride told everyone they met that they were going to kill with knives the man responsible. Even though many people knew of the threat, no one warned the man, and the brothers killed him. However, the investigation following the death reveals that there many questions. The narrator of the story was in the town when his friend was killed. The narrator returns to the town 27 years later. He remembers some things, and asks others what they remember. Although we readers already know the who, what, where, when, and why the death occurred, the narrator makes us see questions inside of questions and mysteries inside of mysteries. These questions and mysteries will be investigated completely, but at the end of the investigation there will be no absolute truth.

Maybe this would be a good time to discuss the influence of some aspects of the social ambience. The period in time of the death was after the First World War, and subsequently, 27 years later. The place was a town of medium size in Colombia along the Caribbean shore some distance from the big cities such as Cartagena, Santa Marta, and Barranquilla. The town was a bit backward and the people somewhat traditional. For example, a bride was imagined to be virgin the night of her wedding. However, only the women had to be so virtuous. In this story, the men, including the twin brothers of the bride, could go to the local whore house, that the author calls "the house of mercies of Maria Alejandrina Cervantes". Nowadays, these attitudes seem curious, silly and oppressive. But not in this time and place -- that inequality of the expectations between the sexes is essential to the story.

Of course, not every woman still had her hymen when she married. Perhaps she had a previous lover. But more likely in that era, she had broken the hymen during some physical activity. In either case, she would have had to do something clever such as stain the sheet with tomato sauce or mercurochrome. If she had not done this, there would have been big problems. Unfortunately, the bride in this story was a little stupid. In spite of the counsel of her female friends, she did not do something clever. Her lack of action resulted in the fatal consequence to the man supposedly responsible.

The story has various principal characters. One is the narrator, who refers to himself simply as "I ". When he speaks of his own thoughts and memories, he speaks in the first person. However, when telling the story, and he speaks about the thoughts and memories of others, he uses the third person combined with dialog. At times he speaks at the time of the events. At other times he speaks from a point of view 27 years later.

The novel has five parts. Each part is not a typical chapter where the story is developed in a chronological sequence. In this novel each part is the same story is told accentuating the perspective of one or more persons and the roles of various persons.

In the first part the narrator speaks of the man who was killed, Santiago Nasar, his mother, his father, his cook, and other people in his life. The reader learns that he is the descendent of Arab Christians, that he has land and wealth, and that he is macho. Also, in the first part the reader learns all of the basic information of "who done it".

In the second part Bayard San Román, the man who retuned his bride, is presented. This part also tells of the people involved in his life such as his fiancé and her family. He is a man of mystery, but he is also rich and handsome. The reader receives more details about the death and the roles of other people of the town.

The third part speaks of the twin brothers of the bride, their lives, their threats and actions on the morning of the death, why Santiago Nasar was not warned, and why the death was not prevented. Of particular interest is that neither the mayor (the government) nor the priest (the church) could prevent the death even though both knew about the threat. Does the failure of these two agents suggest the failure of the institutions that they represent?

The fourth part includes the autopsy, the funeral, the trial of the twin brothers, and the subsequent lives of some of the people most important to the story. There is a terrible scene with the dogs of the home of Satiago Nasar. Before leaving his house for the last time, the cook was dressing some rabbits. Santiago Nasar objected when the cook tossed the entrails to the dogs. Later that morning after being butchered by the twins, Santiago Nasar stumbles into the kitchen with his intestines on the floor. The air is heavy with the smell of human flesh and excrement. The dogs try to eat the entrails. This scene graphically invokes the Biblical admonition in Philippians 3:2 to "Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh." This scene and the scene of the autopsy make this chapter horrific.

The texture of the narration changes in the fifth part when it becomes a serial chronicle of the events. The principle person is Cristo Bedoya, another friend of Santiago Nasar. Bedoya learns that the twins are going to kill Nasar, and he takes the threat seriously. Bedoya is the only person that acts with urgency to find Nasar and prevent the death. But in spite of his efforts, he does not succeed.

As the story progresses, the role of each person, and his contribution to the confluence of events, becomes clear. There are more than 50 people that are mentioned including Colonel Aureliano Buendía, who actually is a character from another Gabriel García Márquez (GGM) novel. Some people are of great importance. Others are only of minor importance. Some people agreed with the brothers. Other heard about the brother but did not take the threat seriously. Still other tried to warn Santiago Nasar but could not find him. However, each person and his actions are spun into a thread that is subsequently woven into a fine tapestry by GGM.

One personal hallmark of a GGM novel is the first sentence that joins several short ideas into a long and complicated train of thought that is both curious and mysterious. So the first sentence of A Chronicle of a Death Foretold appears as "On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at 5:30 in the morning to wait for the boat that the bishop was coming on." Santiago Nasar would be killed by some people. He got up early. The bishop would arrive by boat. We learn how all these things are brought together as the story develops. But compare this first sentence with those of two other GGM novels. In Love in the Time of Cholera we read, "It was inevitable: the smell of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love". And what is perhaps the most famous first sentence of the 20th Century from A Hundred years of Solitude, "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Obviously, these first sentences are the hallmark of a master writer.

Another personal hallmark of GGM is the use of what is called "magic realism". Here in this story, the use of magic realism is subtle and suggested rather than demonstrated. For example, the mother of the man who was killed had the ability to interpret dreams, but could not interpret the dream of her son the morning of his death. The arrival of the bishop presents an ambience of distraction, unfortunate to the mayor and the priest, but fatal to for Santiago Nasar. Also, there is a series of coincidences and discrepancies in the actions of the people of the town before the killing. These coincidences and discrepancies form a mist through which the reader must view the events. Perhaps the most evident use of magic realism only occurs when the smell of rotting flesh clung to all those who touched the body of Santiago Nasar and also permeated the whole town for an entire day.

Reading GGM is not easy, especially in Spanish. His style is so complex and esoteric that the reader can pass over many subtle details. GGM uses strange words and phrases that often obscure rather than clarify what is happening. The best student of Spanish literature will find himself challenged. The novice may find himself overwhelmed. Fortunately, this translation makes the task much easier English speaking person.

This paper was one I wrote for my IB HL English Class, on Chronicle of A Death Foretold (one of our required readings). Although I do not normally like books that are so closely linked to the realm of magic and fantasy, I truly enjoyed this book. Marquez combines a graphic story of murder with an "old world" feel of tradition and fate. This allows the reader to both connect with Nasar in his unfortunate demise, and understand more thoroughly what a small town, which in reality could be our own, goes through, in dealing with the death of one of its most prominant residents. This book is neither complicated, nor hard to finish in one sitting, but the symbols, and underlying concepts Marquez uses to evoke a gripping emotion in the reader, can only be uncovered if the book is read several times. On the surface, it may seem simplistic, but there are much more riveting themes, like love's intertwining relationship with betrayal, fantasy, and material things. The next section are the 2 first paragraphs of the paper I wrote, and hopefully they will give you some insight into how I interpreted the book.

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Why Did No One Warn Santiago Nasar of His Coming Fate?

In Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel Chronicle of A Death Foretold, the murder of Santiago Nasar is the guiding plot. Each separate situation involving the small town in South America somehow intertwines with the Vicario Brothers' plan and execution of murder. The act of murder, according to most, is something to never be taken lightly. Losing ones life is never compensation of any sort, and even murdering for a good cause, is never warranted. Not in this situation however. The more horrible things that happen to Snatiago Nasar, and even his final end never stir much emotion and turmoil, among the viewer, as well the town itself. It seems as though the murder means nothing, no one cares to stop what is inevitably to come. No warnings go out, no tears are shed, no reaction is made, to stop the death of someone undeserving. No matter the pride that has been lost for the family, and the rage of the Vicario twins, murder should not have been come to so easily. This desensitizing of the act of murder in this novel could be due to the threaded magical realistic aspects of the novel, and the idea that it is all a whimsical fantasy, as well as the distraction by the people of the town due to riches and power. Magical realism, introduced by Franz Roh, a German art critic, considered magical realism a category of art. Magical realism, according to Roh, "was a way of representing and responding to reality and pictorially depicting the enigmas of reality..." Roh infers that the magical is a way of masking or showing reality, but in a lightened matter. Perhaps this idea of magical realism, which is apparent throughout this novel, is serving to taint reality for the people of the town, and thus, making ok, the act of murder. In the beginning of the novel, Placida Linero, Santiago Nasar's mother relates to the narrator Santiago's dreams, and what she has inferred for them. Almost like an aura, when her son tells her about what he has dreamed, she picks them apart, and finds some sort of sense in the symbols. Talking to the narrator, she relates that,"she hadn't noticed any ominous augry in the two dreams of her son's, or in the dreams he described to her on the mornings preceding his death," (Marquez 4). Similarly, right after, she relates that the omen felt by Santiago Nasar, sleeping little, waking up with a headache and a sediment of copper stirrup on his palate, was not recognized, and furthermore interpreted them as the natural havoc of the wedding revels that had gone on until after midnight. To calm Nasar's nerves, she later states, "Any dream about birds means good health, " ((Marquez 6). It is probable, that the air of fantasy and tainted reality among the town, and certainly important in the life of Santiago Nasar and his mother, that whatever horrible things lay ahead, they are masked by folklore and magic, and therefore are not taken seriously. In a world of fantasy and good omens, evil things are distant, and foreign.

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold can be a horribly confusing story if a reader has no background information about the author or the genre of literature he writes in.

Magical Realism is a genre of writing in which elements of the fantastical are combined with an otherwise realistic setting. The term was coined around the 1960's, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez was one of the most famous authors of this style. In this book, Marquez uses magical realism in order to challenge the readers to question not only the circumstances of the murder, but the involvement of the entire town as well.

From the beginning, sensory details are used in order to provide contradictory information. Within the first few pages, two very detailed descriptions of the weather are provided, but they are quite contrary to one another.

To add to the confusion, another characteristic of magical realism is used in order to distort time. Time is almost absent throughout the story. The only separation of stories is through separations of paragraphs, and even then it can be difficult to follow. A reader can be almost lost when going through the hearsay and endless masses of stories. The nonsensical arrangements make the reader more aware of the contradictions they contain, but it can be difficult to follow at times.

To relate to the arrangement of time, the effect is revealed throughout the story before the cause has been shown. For instance, the very first line begins with "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". The reader is given the resolution before any exposition or even any conflict. This first line is especially important because it is the only fact throughout the story. All of the other 'facts' given are somehow distorted. This is something key to remember while reading the novel.

Another element is that folklore and somehow magical elements are used and blended in with the real world. A very interesting example of this is when Pedro is telling an investigator what happened and says, "'The strange thing is that the knife kept coming out clean...I'd given it to him at least three times and there wasn't a drop of blood'" (117-118). This application is very fascinating because the situation could be quite real, but the 'facts' given are so unbelievable. Marquez blends the two magical and real elements so well and so naturally that the reader must pay close attention to the hearsay stories and fully understand all of their implications. Marquez's writing flows so well that details like these can be missed if a reader's full attention is not being paid to the text.

The entire book is the presentation of a single event from multiple perspectives, an element of magical realism. Things often get messy and the reader needs to be able to see each character's relationship to Santiago as well as their motivations within their stories. Something interesting to keep in mind could be the narrator's motivations throughout the novel.

My personal opinion is that this is an incredible story and is written in an incredible manner. I would recommend this book to almost anyone, but it is important to be educated about the style the book was written in. This book is one that is easy to get lost in, so before beginning, I would recommend that a reader does some background research about magical realism as a school of literature as well as the background of Marquez as a writer and what influences the way he writes.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez never fails to delight with his work, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold is no exception. Having been to Columbia and experienced the milieu he describes; his stories are all the more enjoyable and lifelike. Chronicle presents a journalistic-style account of the ultra-machismo that pervades rural Latin America. The minute detail and unrelenting dedication to exact time makes for interesting reading. Is it possible that everyone but the victim themselves knows they will be killed? In a small town? The combination of seemingly improbable oversights reaches the point of frustrating the reader. Having discussed it with people familiar with similar circumstances, however, I am inclined to believe that this is nonetheless a feasible situation. Superstition and fear are rampant in Colombia, especially in the backwoods. In an effort to avoid blame or repercussions it is possible that all the citizens of a small town would neglect to notify the target of his imminent doom. The style used in Chronicle is deceivingly complex. The journalistic narrative is filled with irony and satire that never fully capture the author's sentiments. This combination of objectivity and personal insight provides a unique structure. Ideas are never stated directly but rather symbolically through the plot of the story. Santiago Nasar is a Christ figure who becomes a martyr for machismo; Marquez subtle way to criticize his culture. Religion also finds itself the subject of criticism. High officials are made to seem unreligious and even Marquez's sister the nun drinks and carouses. These details not only add to the reader's understanding but are funny as well. I have no reservations in recommending this excellent example of Marquez's semi non-fiction. For those with little time, Chronicle is a short and easy way to explore the world of Marquez's writing as long as you are not looking for his trademark magical realism.

I am a senior in high schoo, taking AP Spanish Literature and for a class assignment I had to read "Chronicle of a Death foretold" noble. This was the first time I read a book in spanish, I realize that most spanish authors use magical realism in order to make their stories interesting. I liked this book because it shows how the characters evolve all throughout the story. At the beginning it shows that every one is peaceful and that nothing ever happens in this town and then things start changing and people become angry and killers.
The reason I really got interested in this story was because the author uses descriptive words to show how Santiago, one of the main characters, is killed. It is as if you can actually see if and it makes you imagine it. There is a scene in the book where you can actually feel like your watching what is happening, is when Santiago is being chazed by the killers and he wants to run in to his house to get saved, but the door shuts right in front of him causing him to get killed, this part makes you want to be there and open the door to save him while the killers are stabbing him.
Another reason is that it relates to the things that arre happening in this world, the authors describes how curruptive the police is and how they sometimes do not take enough action in order to save people. He also describes how morals are not really that important to the people today. This book even though its describing a setting of a long time ago it uses things that today we can actually relate to.
"Chronicle of A Death Forehold" is a story that has no suspence because right since the beginning you know what will happen, but that is not what makes you keep reading, what keeps you reading is to know all the things that happen in just is question of hours.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" is an interesting story written in the style of investigative reporting. The novel is not only an account of a murder which took place in January of 1957, but it is also a novel of manners, a satire, a mystery, and an initiation. The theme of this book, without giving the story away, is that life is determined by inexplicable forces and irrational acts. It seems that everyone knows about the impending murder yet is incapable of warning the future victim. In the small Latin American town whose daily routine is interrupted only once in a blue moon by a sea-borne Bishop, everyone knows everyone else. That's why Bayardo San Roman and his family made such a splash. He contrasts greatly to the other characters of the novel, in his extravagance and his demeanor. Another topic discussed in this book is machismo and the honor code. The conflict of the book stems from the long-past tradition of wedding night virginity and is resolved only by the vengeance of two twin brothers. The way this conflict is played out is at once disturbing and amazing to read: it seems impossible that the murder could happen under the circumstances. This book is frustrating for the reader only because one wishes he could run into the town and warn Santiago Nasar. This novel is filled with characters, major and minor, many of whose names are allusions and biblical references. I thought it was an interesting book, for being so short a lot happened. The technique that I liked the most in the novel was the way that Marquez peeled away layers of the story almost like an onion. Every time he would return to an event more details would be added, more problems would arise. I recommend it as a quick and easy book to read, suspenseful, and sometimes horrifying.

I still don't understand how it is possible to build up the tension the way Marquez does in this masterpiece! Reader knows all the way from the beginning who dies and how it happens. The last chapter of the book is absolutely the best 'collection of pages' that I have ever read, not to underestimate the rest of the book. Pure Ecstasy. What really kicks me in the balls is the fact that all this has really happened. I wonder if the original Spanish version would make it even better than the Finnish one?

Yes, this is a story of a murder foretold. In fact the murder from the beginning is so bluntly bore out that the reader knows not what not to expect. It is not suspense that holds the reader to the book. Nor there is anything present out of the ordinary. Rather, it is the rhythm of the narration, the endless chattering of the town's inhabitants, and coincidences so rare that they can only be the consequence of reality that make the book so curiously compelling. It is as if Garciá Márquez had created something out of thin air. This is story telling of the tallest order.

First of all, the reader should understand this is a Nobel prize winner. He is a true master, at times hard to read.

The beauty, and very high complexity, of this short piece of work is its violation of the traditional organization: introduction,development,climax, resolution, etc. In this work you know the end from the beginning (a guy got murdered), but there is a climax and resolution in every single chapter. He managed to do this by recreating all the events from the point of view of different characters in each chapter. As a reader, you relive the murder every time, but from different (and incomplete) points of view. The complete picture is achieved by "seeing" each individual point of view as a sum.

While apparently short, this text is by no means fast or easy reading. In Spanish speaking countries, it is reading used in College to precisely show what a non-typical writing is. This is how I got involved with this book.

To those arguing the book is repetitios, well ... it does repeat part of the events, but from the eyes of different witnesses.

College question (we all got it wrong in the test, way back in 1984): who did sleep with the killers' sister? None of us, college boys, were able to get this one, so I feel compelled to tell. It will make it not repetitous, but a mistery! It was the narrator, who is her cousin! Find it out yourself!

The novel "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, was an enthralling novel that transformed a simple plot into a satirical work of art. Marquez was able to accomplish this through a narrative technique known as investigative reporting. It was through this dry, objective voice that he was able to slowly reveal the plot while building suspense and conveying his thoughts on society in a discrete and sardonic manner. One example of Marquez's narrative style was his slow revelation of details regarding the murder, telling the story several times, each time revealing more key details. At first, the author only gives basic facts and the perspective of the families. "'When I saw him safe and sound I thought it had all been a fib,' he told me. No one even wondered whether Santiago Nasar had been warned, because it seemed impossible that he hadn't" (Marquez 22). Here the author states the facts about his friend Santiago, the victim of the murder, with little emotion. Not once in the novel does the narrator convey to the reader how he feels; rather he paints a portrait to evoke emotion in the reader. "It was a matter of honor" (Marquez 56). Next, after giving some simple facts, Marques identifies the motive of the killer. However, by wrapping up the loose ends, he leaves even more questions, which perpetuates the reader's interest in the novel overall. "Nevertheless, what had alarmed him most at the conclusion of his excessive diligence was not having found a single clue, not even the most improbable, that Santiago Nasar had been the cause of the wrong" (Marquez 126). Here, near the end of the novel, Marquez informs that his serious matter was all the result of lies and impulsiveness. Before this point, the author gave little evidence whether or not Nasar was the perpetrator; in one paragraph he surprises the reader with the fact that Nasar was most probably identified by Angela as the "criminal" because she knew he would except his death and not cause many problems. This revelation also satires the murderers' motives who killed Santiago based on anecdotal evidence for a crime Angela was equally guilty of. The author successfully conveys to the reader that the machismo complex has become obsolete and satires it through the plot. Thus, it is clear that what gave the book its depth and inspiring aspects was, for the most part, Marquez's narrative technique. Without his objective reporting style, the book would have been no more than an uninteresting book with a simple storyline.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a brilliantly written novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This suspense filled novel keeps the pages turning. Marquez uses the techniques of combining an investigative report and the theme of machismo all into one to make a great novel. Satire plays another important part in bringing this book's best aspects out. Marquez satirixes religion. Within this Colombian community a major focus is religion. The day of this death that is to be foretold, the bishop is to make a stop in this toem. The town has prepared everything for his arrival, but the bishop never stops. He just waves from his boat as he passes by. The judicial system ois another aspect that is satirized.. Two menn are put on trial for killing a man that supposedly took away their sister's virginity. They wait three years in order to be put on trial. The the trial only takes three days to find these two men... I'l leave that for you to find ou tby reading the book. Being a novel based upon machismo also greatly impressed me. Seeing the ways in which family and honorare so sacred in an environment like that and comparing ot to today's society is very interesting. As seen in this novel keeping family honor is very sacred. In their society it must be upheld at any cost, evenif it means death. But today There is rarely anything like that. That's why this book really sparked my interest. I would recommend this book to anybody who enjoys murder mysteries amd pieceing things together.

This is probably the strangest book I have read in my entire life, and yet I found it fascinating. It is full of suspense and while it makes you feel part of the story it makes you at the same time feel powerless at what is about to take place.
You know since the beginning what will happen, who will die, how, when, and even who will kill him, in fact, all the town knows except the unsuspecting Santiago Nasir... poor Santiago, and all for the love of a woman...
Gabriel Garcia Marquez proves he is a genious when it comes to innovation, and brilliantly conceives this tale of murder, suspense and love.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a strangely written, yet strangely entertaining tale about a murder that an entire Caribbean town is guilty of.

This book starts out a little bit slow and hard to follow at points as you are getting crammed with background information. It skips around in the order of events, but never so much that you can't tell where you are within the first page or two.

It tells the story of the death of Santiago Nasar. The murder was foretold by the murderers, the Vicario twins, but no one in the town would take any action until it was too late and the deed was done.

After the wedding between Bayardo San Roman and Angela Vicario, it was discovered by Bayardo San Roman that Angela Vicario was not a virgin. Bayardo San Roman takes her back to her family's house where her twin brothers, Pedro and Pablo Vicario manage to get the name of the man out of her, "Santiago Nasar." The story then takes off from there, from the Vicario twins telling the entire town of their plans to kill Santiago Nasar to the very graphic and gruesome death scene.

Although this is a book that lacks a few key ingredients, such as a solid beginning and a major plot twist, it is made up for by Gabriel Garcia Marquez's brilliant attention to detail, vivid descriptions and unique writing style that is sure to be unlike anything you've ever read before. This is definitely a must-read for any murder mystery fan. Don't let the lack of a high page count deceive you, because this is a book that packs a punch you won't forget for a long time.

I'm not sure what it is about "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" that was so enthralling. The descriptions are vivid, the characters are well-drawn. Marquez even manipulates the time element (the murder of the protaganist is actually the last thing that happens in the book, while throughout the text, the story jumps throughout the chronology of the days before and after the murder). Whatever's going on, it sticks with you after you read it. A thick, humid, South American night

It is the wish of every writer to form a distinct and unique style to separate them from mainstream literature. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, once said: "I only write about things I know. People I've seen. I don't analyze." In this context the unique style reflected in Gabriel Marquez's work reflects a very personalized writing style specific to magical realism. Chronicle of a Death Foretold was written for the sole purpose of producing a form of fiction that was distinguished from realistic and naturalistic fiction. It combines both the "truthful and the verifiable" aspects of realism with the magical effects we associate with myth's and folktales. Marquez uses a technique which is "interweaved, in an ever-shifting pattern, a sharply etched realism in representing ordinary events and descriptive details together with fantastic dream-like elements."1 This style enables the author to vary writing styles throughout the novel from a general view to a much more specific and descriptive form. Marquez's roots in journalism from his past are allowed to pass through his text into the minds of his reader.

This novel should be classified as one of the "required" reads of our century. Personally I have learned a lot about the various writing styles and techniques Marquez utilizes in this book. I would strongly recommend this novel!!!

In the novel, Chronicle Of A Death Foretold, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, much happened that I disagree with. I believe that the actions of certain characters were unjust and unfair. In the novel, Santiago Nassar was killed because he was accused of taking Angela Vicario's virginity before she was married. This was seen as dishonorable in the Colombian society in which they lived. After she had been wed and was discovered to be a non-virgin, her husband returned her to her family. Angela was beaten, and Angela's two twin brothers, Pablo and Pedro Vicario killed the accused, Santiago Nassar. Despite the fact that Santiago and the Vicario brothers were friends, the brothers avenged their sister's honor by killing Santiago. The two brothers then confessed and went to jail for three years before their trial, because they couldn't afford bail. At the trial they were found innocent and released even though there was no evidence that Santiago was the one who took Angela's virginity. The brothers were released because their killing was seen as an act of honor. In my opinion I think that the murder of Santiago was wrong. Santiago didn't commit the crime he was accused of, yet he was killed anyway. Death is also unreasonable punishment for such a minor act as taking a girl's virginity. Santiago didn't even get a chance to defend himself. It is unfair that Santiago be the one to suffer such severe punishment while Angela gets away with a mere beating from her mother. I think she should've been punished just as harshly as Santiago. After all, she took part in the loss of her virginity also. She wasn't raped, therefore making her just as guilty as Santiago. Another thing about the murder that I thought was unjust was the trial and results. Even though the brothers confessed to the murder and it was seen as an act of honor, it turned out that they killed the wrong guy. Yet they were still released and found innocent, and they showed no remorse. I believe that just the act of murder is punishable, worse yet an unreasonable act of murder. I think that even though the murder was done out of vengeance, the brothers should've been punished for killing the wrong guy, and their friend at that. They took an innocent life and weren't even punished for it. Events in the novel showed some of the flaws of Colombian society, which is controlled by males and therefore women are treated unfairly or unequally by our American standards. Another flaw of Colombian society is that both men and women have little control over their lives because others unlawfully take matters into their own hands. Employing these flaws, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was able to create a novel filled with excitement and controversy.

this book was given to me by a friend and I had never read Garcia Marquez before. I read it in one sitting and was enthralled. I then sought out many other works by the author and have loved them all - particularly 100 years of solitude. This is a great book to read first because it's accessible and not too lengthy. It will give you the flavor of Garcia Marquez and you'll know whether he is for you.

Marquez's book Chronicle is a poignant novel and its relationship with real life events makes the story especially intriguing. Set in Columbia, the novel highlights the tradition of "machismo" and the strong Hispanic male ego. In this story a young Spanish-Arab womanizer has apparently messed with the wrong girl and will suffer the wrath of her family. Marquez, apparently touched by the actual death of a friend involving similar circumstances, chose to "report" on the issues of male and female roles withing society, especially focusing on the consequences of these stations. Murder, depression, and social exile are the result however instead of being ultimately depressing, the novel intrigues the reader and educates her through the journalistic style and detective-story subject matter. Never the less, the end result is a challenge of the social norms. AS readers we are forced to examine our own ideas of male and feamle roles. How would we act in the place of the different characters? Would we have tried to stop the forestold death? Or complacently watched like most other towns people?
When faced with these questions, and others, hte reader becomes a participant in hte story not just a spectator and this is what makes the novel fascinating. Great for a book club!

In this book the narrator brings us back twenty seven years and introduces us to Santiago Nasar, a respected and wealthy man still living by his father's model in a small town in Columbia. The story begins on the day of Santiago's death. The night before had been a long one with the marriage of Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman. The husband, angered by the new knowledge that his wife had not been a virgin at the time of their marriage, returned her to her family. Angela's brothers were left stuck in the position of defending their sister and set out to kill the one said to be guilty of stealing Angela's virginity, Santiago Nasar. While the town is awaiting an infrequent and impersonal visit from the Bishop, the Vicario brothers conspire to take revenge ("homicide in legitimate defense of honor") on Santiago. They attempted to make the murder be known publicly, flashing their ten inch butcher knives as a way to make the revenge understood, or maybe as a way for them to be stopped, but they were disregarded "Their reputation as good people was so well founded that no one paid any attention to them `We thought it was drunkards baloney'". And as a result of this confusion Santiago was the last one to find out about their plan, despite the threatening letter that the brothers had placed on his doorstep. It seemed that his close friends and relatives simply neglected to mention that the Vicario brothers were planning to kill him. In this peculiar town the facts have been blurred into opinion and nothing is certain from the weather on the day of the murder to whether Santiago was guilty. As the book spirals through the haze of events surrounding the murder the traditional hero and villain characters become less and less distinguishable and all of the characters seem humanly justified. Some characters may even seem familiar such as Maria Cervantes who also appeared in his short story "I Only came to Use the phone". It leaves us to wonder whether this story (based on real happenings) is just one of many slightly factual stories. As always Gabriel Garcia Marquez ends the story somewhat abruptly, leaving the questions unanswered. The magical realism present in much of his writing shifts to sheer oddity in Chronicle Of A Death Foretold as the improbable becomes strangely convincing.

This is only my second encounter with the writing of Gabriel García Márquez, and I know now that it will not be my last. "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" was a brief intro to Márquez's whimsically dark writing, but diving into "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" introduces the reader to a deeply morbid story.

"Chronicle of a Death Foretold" may appear small and simple at first glance as mentioned in reviews before me, however the dark complexity hidden between it's cover is quickly exposed. It is the story of a murder everyone in the town knew was going to take place, yet did nothing to stop. Márquez uses many types of characters to shape the town and scandals that the reader is quickly enthralled in. The dark twists that are constantly being thrown in make comments on a community and its deepest, darkest inner workings. Márquez comments on honor and shame, and revenge through this murder story, and uses a broken time frame to point the reader to exactly what it is that he wants them to find.

Wonderfully written, heartbreaking detailing of of the inevitability of one boy's savage murder, given the context of his time, his culture, and the varied motivations and resignations of the people in his small town. A statement in the human condition.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a masterpiece of irony and satire. It follows the incidents leading up to the death of Santiago Nasar and then shows the repercussions of his death. Marquez uses satire to poke fun at everything from the church to legal systems in general. His absurdly ironic series of improbable events makes this book one of the most humorous pieces of literature I have ever encountered. The investigative style the book is written in creates an atmosphere that truly makes the book come alive. Every detail is minutely explained and described by the brilliant skill of Marquez. The novel is not without its problems. One failing of this book is that the numerous names all sound the same. This makes the book very hard to follow. It is not a book for casual reading. Also, the irony is almost more than a normal person can bear. It left me with the same feeling I have when I'm watching a horror movie and one character goes in the haunted house to investigate the strange noise. If you find yourself yelling at the characters in horror films than this book is not for you, but if you love satire and a good mystery I would recommend this book.

In Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, though it is supposed to be a fictional mystery, actually the this story is based on a real one encountered by the author 27 years beforehand. This novel also relays the strict traditional culture of Latin America. During the time of the story, parents still arranged marriages and girls always had to be virgins when they got married. If the girl was not a virgin she would be returned to her family with a cursed name and not able to marry again. No respectable or wanted bachelor would want a girl who is not a virgin, a girl who is not pure. The family of the Vicario's were very angry and the brothers wanted to seek revenge and kill Santiago for taking their sister's virginity. So the story ends in tragedy, because the Vicario brothers are jailed and Angela is exiled from her hometown because of her cursed family and her mother. In this story I enjoyed the characterization and writing style of this novel. This is an excellent book to help the reader learn about Latin American culture and to understand traditional values. This is a novel that holds your interest and it great for adults of all ages.

What I first enjoyed about this novel was the feeling of being tansported to a different place. I am fascinated by Latin American and it's people, so to have the opportunity to read a novel such as this was very appealing to me. Marquez develops a very interesting, thought-provoking situation, providing the reader with a catalyst for examining one's own viewpoints that, normally, one would not consider. What I also liked about this book, since I read it in a classroom environment, was the fact that it's very interesting to hear other's opinions on the subject matter. What IS this book really about? What are our American values as opposed to the values of this small town? Is this type of marraige between two people a good idea?
All of these questions were asked in class, and it provided for some very interesting discussion. I would highly recommend this book to teachers looking for a catylst for discussion about diverse world social values, and also to people who are interested in Latin American culture. While I am sure that this book does, in a way, stereotype the traditional mysoginist point of view many Americans feel Latin Americans hold, it is still a good way to start a debate on that, while at the same time, examining our own values as U.S. citizens. The parallels between their culture and ours is, at times, very pardoxial.
A great novel!

Irony becomes an important theme in Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In my opinion, it is overused. The two men strut around town telling anyone who is in their path that they are on a mission for murder. As the book unravels, the entire town knows about Santiago Nasar and his dark fate except for Santiago himself! The mayor, police, Santiago's friends, and a priest are all aware of this potential murder, however none of them think to tell Santiago! They all expect that he would already know. This irony takes up a good portion of the Chronicle, and I think it becomes frustrating that one event, or rather the build up to the murder, took most of the chronicle. Many other things ironically twist into the foretold death. Santiago Nasar tells Marques, the author, that he does not want any flowers at his funeral because the smell of closed- in flowers had a relation to death, unaware that he will die the next day. A chronicle is a continuous historical account of events arranged in order of time without analysis or interpretation. Marques, a journalist as well as author, shows journalistic style. The flow of the book goes from one character to the next, as if being interviewed. Telling the story as a sequence of different "talks" that Marques had with many townsfolk. He collects different experiences of this day and his investigations added up to create this chronicle.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez applied his special tatic of mystery and confusion just like the famous boo, ¡°One Hundred Years of Solitude here. It describes a story of the murder case that happened 27 years ago in a town where the narrator, ¡°me¡± of the book grew up. It is based on a true story which the author heard when he grow up. But, the story was modified and fictionalized by him. There are so many characters in the book that the readers have to pay special attention to keep track of all of them; it is very easy to get confused.
Santiago Nasar who is murdered brutally had not even known the reason for his death. He was confused when he was informed that the Vicario brothers wanted to kill him. ¡°I don¡¯t understand a God-damned thing¡±(p.135) The Vicario brothers, Pedro and Pablo feels that they were obliged to kill Santiago since their sister, Angela confesses he was the one who took her virginity. Without any future investigation or proof, they decide to kill Santiago. Angela marries a rich guy named Bayardo San Roman who has just come in to the town looking for a girl to get married. Unfortunately, Bayardo finds out that Angela is not a virgin after the wedding and then returns her home. Angela takes a little time and tells her brothers that it was Santiago. The Vicario brothers feel that Santiago has dishonored their family and that they have to kill him. This news gets spread between townsmen, but nobody dares to take it seriously. The death, which could be prevented, then occurs when the Vicario brothers meet Santiago in front of his house.
The narrator interviews all the people who were involved in that incident 27 years later, but never explain or clarify whether Santiago actually took Angela¡¯s virginity or not. Also, it is not clear why people did not help Santiago.
There has been controversy over whether it rained or not on the day in which Santiago is brutally murdered. Some claims that it rained when the others say it was a beautiful shiny day. Santiago could avoid the murder if he had sat down with his future father-in-law and talk about the murder plan of the Vicario. Extremely confused, he just wanders around and finally finds his house when the Vicario brothers have been waiting for his appearance. It is a mystery who actually took Angela¡¯s virginity. ¡°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¡¦¡±(p. 53) The Townsmen claim that Angela picked Santiago since he was pretty powerful and wealthy guy in the town. They think that there is a secret lover she protected. Santiago faces his death without even knowing why he had to be killed.
Chronicle of a death foretold has a lot of mystery which arouse people¡¯s curiosity. The readers want to read more and more, however, at the end nothing gets clarified. The inhumane `murder of Santiago is the only thing that is explained well.

garcia marquez gives us a chilling account of a murder that has occurred 20 years ago.a newly wed bride is returned to her parents when her husband finds out that she is not a virgin.the bride in question names Santiago Nasar as her violator.Santiago is notorious for his seductive nature and the brothers of the bride decide to kill him as a means of protecting the family's honour. before dawn the whole town knows their design of murdering Nasar. some people try to warn him, some dont but eventually Nasar is murdered in broad daylight by the brothers in a most gruesome way.
a mix of magic realism ,journalistic mode of writing and a constant shift from the present to the past makes the book extremely interesting. this gripping novella is one of the best crime stories written.
read the book to get a flavour of the tension, the anxiety and the helplessness that is portrayed so very wonderfully by garcia marquez
a book not to be missed by any avid reader....enjoy!

Marquez's investigative reporting syle is very interesting and make helps make the book easy to read. His style distiguishes this book from many other I have read. The characters are not as developed as i would have liked. The characters are developed through the opinions of the others in the town. The whole story is told through heresay from what the townspeople observed. The question of if Angela was telling the truth about her and Santiago's love affair is never clearly stated. Marquez's whole investigation is to try and understand what really happened to his best friend. The whole investigative reporting style brings so many charcaters into the book is is hard to keep track of all of them. There is a lot of satire and irony in this story also. There is satire on religion and law mostly. In this book they live in a time when machismo and family honor are valued greatly. Men want to be the machoist of them all. In Spanish countries machismo is very important and determines how much of a man you are. The Vacario brother were showing their machismos and tring to keep the family honor when they murdered Santiago.

This short story is seperated from many other classic works due to its technical nature. The 'report' style shows a part of the authors history. The translation is most likely perfect, as I have yet to read such a novel, in my native english or otherwise. The tension it holds for such a short novel, and sustains after the reading, is incredible, in comparison to some much larger books.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Marquez is an excellent book. Written in a investigative-reporting style, it contains suspense, satire, and irony. The setting of the book is a small town in Colombia. The plot is simple: two brothers have a responsibility, by tradition, to kill a man accused by their sister as her perpetrator. Although the brothers take on the task it seems that they are not very comfortable with the idea of committing a murder and they don't let any opportunity go by when they announce their intentions to the towns people (almost in hope that someone will stop them). The irony lays in the fact that almost the whole town knows about the brothers' plan way before the victim or his mother finds out. Marquez does a great job satirizing religion, the legal system and the society as a whole. The reader is told about the murder in the first few pages of the book but the narrator reveals the details slowly through out the book. The book makes you think: what would you do if you were in the shoes of one of the characters? how could you have prevented the death foretold ? how would you deal with a similar situation in real life: would you caution the victim and notify the authorities or would you be indifferent (thinking that someone else will do it)? The book was fun and interesting to read. I recommend Chronicle of Death Foretold highly especially if you are a looking for a mystery book which takes you in another culture this should be your first pick. Plus its easy and quick to read.

This book is a fantastic examination of a small town's mindset and how traditions and prejudices affect our actions and can have dire consequences. A gripping story with involved characters, chilling events, and most of all, a disturbing message that will make you think about how you react to headlines or gossip. If you're interested in Gabo or good books in general, give this a shot.

The first couple chapters of "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez begin to tell the story of a very interesting murder. From the start the reader knows there has been a murder, however the reader does not know they will be reading the first few chapters of the book over, and over again, throughout the novel. True to his journalistic style of writing, Marquez told this true story to expose the details of a scandalous murder. The man who was killed was a good friend of the author, and he went by the name of Santiago Nassar. He was a rich man who was murdered for being accused of taking the virginity of a woman in his small Spanish town. Even though "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" is true, it contains more stylistic elements than most fiction. For a true story the reader can find a surprising amount of foreshadowing, satire, and irony. Marquez thoroughly investigated the crime, but carefully only conveyed the most important facts, and in a very objective way. He embellishes certain ideas add to the satire, etc., but the book still shows how intricate real life can be. This novel promises to be very interesting, but becomes somewhat disappointing when the reader is forced to read the same story many times over. Marquez makes the story more interesting each time he tells it, but it is still the same story. It seems as each couple chapters is a different draft, and the author used them all.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes of a Latin American murder, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, which is truly foretold. The one thing that is not foretold is the setting making this book hard to picture in your mind, but the murder theme is evident. The murder is told to you straight out on the first page so you have a very good idea what the plot will be, but the details are spread out through out the entire book dragging it out. The entire town knows that the Vicario twins are out to murder Santiago Nasar, who is almost portrayed as an antagonist, for dishonoring their sister, Angela Vicario. The book is set up as a trial, asking questions and then responses in which you get to see exactly what happened before the murder. All citizens are questioned about events that happened 27 years ago and are asked what they believe happened on that fatal morning and all events prior to.

The rich Bayardo San Roman wishes to marry Angela Vicario and the wedding is wonderful and it turns into an entire town's event. On their wedding night Bayardo San Roman returns Angela to her family saying that she isn't a virgin. Honor apparently is worth more than money. When her brothers, Pablo and Pedro, find out that it was Santiago Nasar who "did" it, they decide the proper punishment is death. Although the entire town knows the twins' plan, nobody attempts to stop the murder and Santiago Nasar is killed the morning after the wedding. The climax and resolution are at the exact same time in this book making the rest of the book seem tiresome.

Marquez takes you through all events leading up the murder and explains reasoning and goes through such great detail in telling you about the murder that you are not sure what to expect. Yes, it is complicated. How do you end a book when you know what's going to happen? Marquez was able to pull this off and he did it pretty well but this was all in the last twenty pages.

Although you know who the murderers are, you do not know the precise details of the actual murder making this a bizarre but suspenseful mystery. These events are all wrapped up in each other making this book somewhat difficult to follow. In the end most loose ends are tied together completing the story but I would not recommend this book for anyone who is looking for action. In fact, all action is at the end and you really have to dig into the book before it gets interesting. My personal opinion is that it's not my cup of tea and I would prefer something else, but if you enjoy mysteries where you have to predict details and not actual events...then this book is for you.

This book is the reason why I fell in love with Marquez! This book is a short and brutal rollarcoaster ride of events leading up to the enevitable fall in the end. I read this book in about 2 hours, and when I was finished I couldnt believe it. It is amazing! I have since read it about 6 or 7 times, but the story has so much it is still new. A definite must read for everyone

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is an account of the killing of Santiago Nasar. He was stabbed to death by twin brothers Pedro and Pablo Vicario for a perceived offense against the honor of their family. The day before, their sister Angela had been married to Bayardo San Román, a wealthy but enigmatic young man, then returned to her family during the night when he discovered that she was not a virgin.
García Márquez occupies most of this short novel with detailing the actions of the Vicario brothers and Nasar in the hours leading up to Nasar's death. The novel is not really about either the killers or the victim, however, it's about the people of their small Caribbean village.
As we quickly learn, the Vicario brothers felt honor-bound to try to kill Nasar, but they would have been perfectly satisfied not to succeed. They told everyone who would listen of their intentions - thus making Nasar's a "death foretold" - and it is apparent that they were hoping someone would stop them. No one did. The mayor of the town came the closest, taking their knives away. When told that the brothers had simply acquired new knives, he went to confront them again, but stopped first to check on a date for dominoes that night, and by then it was too late. Similarly, few of the villagers did anything to try to warn Nasar that two men were out to kill him. Instead they all gathered round to watch the exciting event.
The villagers' conduct is bizarre, very different from how real people would behave. I suspect that García Márquez believes the villagers' pattern of behavior is one real people follow all too often.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Martha Southgate [$$$]...Because much of this book is spent reminding the reader of the main character (Santiago Nasar)'s death, it somewhat loses its impact. However, it moves you all the same, though it's possible that the anticipation of his death somewhat contributes to the astounding impact of the end. This book is a journalistic interpretation of one man's murder and the events surrounding it. It begins at the wedding of Angela Vicario, a local beauty, and Bayardo San Roman, a well-to-do millionaire who is a new arrival to the small Colombian town where the story takes place. Upon discovering on wedding night that his wife was not a virgin, Bayardo returns her to her family. When asked who had taken her virginity and soiled their family honor, she quickly replies Santiago Nasar, though some say she lied. Her two twin brothers, Pedro and Pablo Vicario, decide to uphold family honor by murdering Santiago. Santiago's death is imminent by the first sentence, so you soon realize that there is no chance of a last minute reprieve. Though much of the book reads like a news article, Gabriel Garcia Marquez will suddenly throw in a beautiful description, or a quick character judgement, despite his tries to be impartial. Also diminishing from this book's appeal is the time; irregular at best, which turns this book into something of a jumble of time and names we truly don't need to know. My only other problem with this book was that of the lack of direction, however, in almost any other book it would take away from it. Whereas, in this case you are given the impression that the narrator is painting a picture, beginning with an outline. And I must admit that the colors swirl together well in a finished picture, though somewhat stiffly. This is a break from the standard storytelling form. All this information comes at you in a surprisingly cohesive form, though still not as easy to read as something straightforward. I find it somewhat ironic that it is titled a "chronicle", as I see it more as a "Portrait of a Death Foretold" (I'll be sure to write Gabriel Garcia Marquez and pitch that to him for later publications) Also, the powerful ending image of the death of Santiago Nasar leaves you stunned. All in all, a good book, marred by few and far between discrepancies

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's brilliant novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, is a journalistic perspective of the events surrounding a murder. Wriiten as a narrative, Marquez reports in a style unlike any other, while exposing his talent for the use of literary techniques, most importantly dramatic and situational irony. His effective and profound satire on religion and the law add to the strength of the book as a whole. Marquez's use of his original technique, magical realism, makes the novel even more unique. This adds surreal aspects to the plot which are characteristic of Marquez alone. Although Chronicle is humorous at times, Marquez never allows the reader to forget the purpose of his story. He slowly feeds the many layers of the story to the reader, who is eager for every bite. I highly recommend this piece of literature, not only as a good mystery, but as a story with a theme which has relevence for anyone's life.

This short novel by GMM is about the inability or unwillingness of people to communicate and take responsibility, and by extension, about their indifference to one another.
Everyone knows that the brothers plan on killing Santiago Nasar, but no one cares to tell him, either by indifference, or because every person in the village believes that someone else has told Nasar that he was about to be attacked.
The book is short, magnificently written, and, although the outcome is known from the ourset, one can never tell what will come next.
In addition to being a pleasure to read, this novel stuck me as intelligent. In a little more than 100 pages - that is to say the writing is not verbose, GGM describes a constant of humanity: indifference to others.
One of the most impressive achievements I've ever read

I didn't like this book at all. It seemed to jump from one thought to the next without finishing the first thought. The only part that was any good was when the story was actually in present rather than recalling a detail. It's an interesting way to tell a story, but if it's going to be told this way, I think the thoughts should be more complete.

Cold blooded murder as Spanish honor... by twins with butcher knives.
A transplanted Arab who took a maiden's virtue, so that her husband took her back to her mother's house on their wedding night.
This novel is very well written so that you feel like you have been transported to a past time.
The Spanish male has two sets of morals: one for the public image
and the other for private life.
In a way the young Arab man met an end of his own making?
Death sentence for consenting sex is just not a very modern American attitude.

"Crónica de una muerte anunciada" es una de las obras maestras de la literatura universal y latino-americana. ES una obra breve, pero escrita con una calidad de un maestro. He leído dos veces esta obra pero una tercera y cuarta vez no serían inútiles. García Márquez, en esta novela corta, demuestra cómo se puede manejar los tiempos paralelos en la narrativa.
Altamente recomendado!

I was required to read this for a modern literature class. At first I was unsure of what to expect, but as I read it I was enthraled by the story telling. It's so limiting to look at this book as only a story. There is so much more meaning behind Marquez's words, but even in its simplicity it is a wonderful book.

As always, I enjoy reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's work and this book did not disappoint me. Even though the reader knows who killed Santiago Nasar the book still reads as a "who did it" and drew me in with the turn of each page.

On page 6 is says, "the pistol went off as it hit the floor and the bullet wrecked the cupboard in the (bed)room, went through the living room wall, passed through the dining room of the house next door with the thunder of war, and turned a life-size saint on the main altar of the church on the opposite side of the square to plaster dust."
I don't know much of anything about guns but is that at all possible? If this was suppose to be GGM's mystical mythiness it was stupidly done.

In the opening paragraph of this book it says "He'd dreamed he was going through a grove of timber trees where a gentle drizzle was falling, and for an instance he was happy in his dream, but when he awoke he felt completely splattered with bird s----." What? It must be the translation.

Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa who's suppose to be a great translator but... it doesn't work for me.

Over the yrs I've tried a few GGM's books and just could never understand them. They never made sense even with my mind wide open and suspension of disbelief clicked on.

Well...... once again as many others i was forced to read this much to my ismay. and i still to this day (well..... 4 days after reading it). Don't have a clue what wen't on a why it is such a "excellent" book. My trouble was probably the fact it was in spanish and i as many of the younger generation had seen teh film before. and as any one knows some takes the pleasure away when reading it.!

After reading everyone else's review, some acted as if they had the whole novel figured out. I don't think it was that easy though. For example, the last sentence on page 53 where Angela gives Santiago's name to me leaves a lot of questions up in the air. Was she telling the truth about Santiago? Did she think she was protecting him because she thought her brothers wouldn't touch him? Or was she protecting the identity of another man altogether? To me that single sentence should be one's focus for thought while reading the novel. Even after looking very hard to support any of these ideas I still am not sure which one seems to fit best.

It was refreshing to read a murder story from a new perspective and style. However, the story shifted in time constantly, which made it difficult to follow. I wasn't sure who was still alive and who was where at any given point in time. If the reader is not careful, he/she could easily got lost.

John-Samuel Mackay
5/23/02
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. "They've killed Santiago Nasar!" This book contains various accounts of a murder in a small Colombian town. Each townsperson tells a different story about how Santiago Nasar was killed by the Vicario brothers to avenge their sister, who lost her virginity to Santiago. The narrator is interviewing people 27 years after the murder happened. The only similarities in all the testimonies is that Pedro and Pablo Vicario told everyone about their plan to kill Santiago, yet no one prevented it from happening. The author does a good job of setting the scene, however there are at times too many details. Not much is said about the lives of the people outside of this event. Each person's account is described in greater detail until finally the actual moment of his death is told. After the murder Pedro and Pablo are arrested and they give in without a fight. They tell the court that they are proud of what they did, and that they had been planning it for as long as they knew about their sister's virginity. The plan was to avenge their sister. The brothers pretty much want the crime to be seen in the largest detail possible. That is why it is a "Death Foretold." In my opinion I enjoyed reading the basic facts and hearing the story according to many different people. What made me lose focus was the endless detail in which everything was described. Honestly, do we really need to know about every relative of every character in the book? Other than that this book held my attention to the very end. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written many other novels and short stories. I have read one of his short stories A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, which I enjoyed very much. That short story describes the magical realism of an angel falling in someone's back yard. The story then becomes about what the family does with the angel as their back yard gets flooded with visitor. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is similar in the way that it captures the magical realism surrounding the murder. "Did they actually kill him after telling so many people? Chronicle is a short, action-packed novel that will keep you guessing. Even the ending of the book in some ways leaves you hanging. The last image is the exact moment Santiago Nasar dies, and nothing at all is mentioned afterward. The ending begins to lead readers to believe that there will be a sequel to this book. I definitely feel intrigued to read more of the works by Marquez.

While appearing to rxplore the many points of view about a tragic murder in a small community, it's truly a moral expose that unmasks and challenges hypocrisies and complexities underlying a highly religious culture.

This book is a traditional example of circular narrative. Although that type of narrative can be used to keep the reader interested, it did not occur in this novel. The form of circular narrative used made the book more difficult to read because the reader continued to say "I know this already." However, overall, it was fairly good.

The book was somewhat interesting but very well written. The book was told from a, for me, new point of view. It was told from the point of view of an interviewer who went around to the people that had lived in that time and found out their recollections of the events. This was an intriguing way to look at the information. Also, the novel was definitely not chronilogically oriented. Since the narrator tells the book from the order of the interviews it jumps around from place to place and is sometimes hard to follow. The book, however, didn't inspire any thinking or thought from myself. It was merely an enjoyable book to pass the time, simply a story. When I read a book I like to have it inspire thought, critical thinking, or an idea. All that this book taught me was to not take the virginity of a girl in a small Caribbean town and wait around for the consequences. That is all.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is about a man Santiago Nasar who is murdered by brothers Pedro and Pablo Vicario for not honoring their sister Angela Vicario. Although the intention for them to kill Santiago was announced to the whole town or anyone who was around and wanted to listen no one still seemed to do anything. Maybe it was because no one thought that the Vicario twins could do something like that because they were so well respected and not looked at as murderers.

To me, although others might feel differently this book didn't have much meaning. I didn't think that the plot was all that interesting although there were parts that were interesting to read but for the most part through out the book it was just, boring to me. It might have been just because I didn't understand a lot of it. There were either phrases that didn't make sense to me, or the part that I was reading just didn't make sense on why that person might have been doing a certain thing or who was talking or where they were. But just when things might start to get good in the book they go away as quickly as they can up. I could be reading a really interesting part and not want to put it down and then all of a sudden, it's right back to where it was before. Towards the end of the book there was a part that I liked and that was when they explained in detail about what happened the night Santiago was murdered by the Vicario twins. That was interesting because I knew what was going on and I didn't have to go and reread because I didn't understand something it was very straight forward. But although there were few parts like that when there were those parts it was very good.

For me although I like mystery books this was not the type of mystery book I would usually read. I know that the author Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a noble prize winner but for me this book did not seem to represent one of his best works. I think that this book was wrong choice book for me because I like more action and more interesting books that hold my attention and Chronicle of a Death Foretold didn't really fulfill that. I think this book is too old for me. I would recommend this book to older people who enjoy reading and reading new things. For me I wouldn't read this again and I wouldn't recommend this book as a top choice.

Someone offered this to me as an intro to GGMarquez. I loved the book. It's short and engrossing. You feel like you've read a great big book in 2 hours. I then moved on to 100Years and discovered that Chronicle is not typical of GGM. Still love GGM, but be warned, this one is different. Can be a twilight zone, but it'll need to be 2 hours.

chronical is a truely amazing book filled with all sorts of irony and satire where every detail contains some meaning. in his portrayal of the small town's values, marquez really gets you thinking about society today and all of similarly ridiculous ideals. his journalistic writing style helps tremendously with reading the novel to as it keeps things interesting by revealing information a little a time and making it easy to read and understand. as a whole, chronicle is a fantasic book with a powerful message about the ideals by which we live our lives.

Throughout the book, I expected there is something more than the mere recall of events. There are too many questions left unanswered. The only satisfatory part of the book is the story about Angela.

This is not a mystery/suspense book but exactly what its title suggests: a chronicle. The actual death and its reasons or consequences are not its main themes. Its attraction lies on the fascinating blending of different life stories intersected by a murder. No judgement is passed, this was not meant to be a social essay. It's the interwoven lives of the main heroes and the villagers, each one's contribution to the pattern of an otherwise simple plot that make this book so rich and so ingeniously conceived.

This short tale is exactly what the title says, and so much more! Amazing how much intrigue and beauty can be found in a story where you already know the outcome. It's in the details, the small and quiet spaces between the big events, where the real story lies. Marquez is an innovator, a wordsmith, a poet, and above all, a great storyteller. He looks beyond the obvious; this book will make you do the same. I am reading his "One Hundred Years of Solitude" now; I think he is brilliant.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book of a Chronicle of a death foretold is a breath taking experience that will mesmerize you. It will make your right guard turn left. It's about how a set of twins must avenge their family name. How dishonoring one's family can foretell a person's death. The author takes you through a rollercoaster of events that are foretold in the beggining of the book. Once you've started you can't put his book down. It's more shocking then a shocker! We felt that we could not connect to the book because it wasn't a book for us teenagers (waise,chirs,gabe,alvaro,J.P., and me). But overall it was ok. Ater emphisizing what the twins went through, we could understand the reason for wanting to get revenge.
amir waise chris gabe alvaro J.P.
P.s. If you wanna be hip and down like us ... ur gonna have to read this book to know what we're talking about

This is one of my favorite books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez... I think it even outshines One Hundred Years of Solitude in terms of the innovation of the storytelling within such a brief work. I found myself drawn in and touched, hoping against hope for the doomed Santiago Nasar. Caution: this story is somewhat different from the magical realism for which other Garica Marquez books are known. I loved it -- try it!

A slow and non-well conceived book. It will be shunned by the ages, locked in a vault where some postal worker (let's call him "Dusty") loses it at the bottom of a pile of plague infested rats and dead bodies.

My favorite opening line of all time "the day they were going to kill him". Yes, Marquez gives the ending away at the begining but is the journey to that ending that counts. Everytime I read this book, I say to Santiago, "tell someone already", "don't go that way", but even though I am unable to save his life with my warnings, I keep coming back to the book. It's one of his best, I recommend to all.

Even though i knew from the beginning of the book that Santiago Nasar was going to be murdered, i still wanted him to survive and was hoping that somehow the ending would change. The thing that makes this book disturbing is the unexplainable coincedences and the way friends can do nothing to stop the death of Santiago. The most disturbing part was when Santiago's mother was the one who unknowingly closed the door in front of her son cutting off his escape.

Marquez has always gripped me and this is no exception. It is a little short, but it all books had this much character development, I would save many hours in my life.
If you haven't read it - you must

This was definitely a better read than "In Evil Hour," but lacking in notable passages. It immediately starts with the murder and recounts the various stories surrounding the murder. Although a little slow at times in moving through these narratives, it slowly builds to a climatic end. Overall it was a slow story, but the ending made it worth the wait.

Although this is not on a par with Marquez's great works, 100 Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, it is a good introduction to the skill of this writer. He tells you the climax in the first few pages yet gets you to want to read how the climax comes about. It is worth the trouble to read. My students love it.

I fear the heart of this novel was lost in translation. Nothing in the book made me care about the characters, some of whom seemed less than believable. Motives were not entirely clear for actions taken. If I had not needed to read it for my book club, I would not have finished it.

Im fascinate with one ingenious sentence which is the key where The World belong.Could YOU imagine that world where we are living with that sentence" My personal impression". Someone of us pronounethis sentence,but someone cover up,still thinking such as pronounce. brainstorme

I just don't get this book. It's well written, but it's about an idiot caught up in a land of idiots. Supposedly, it's a honor killing. But he's just an idiot. I suppose that entering the mind of an idiot can be interesting, but we don't enter idiot's mind. We just watch the idiot mindlessly act like an idiot. 2 stars for style, 0 stars for content. A real disappointment after the great One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I felt like the plot of this book was interesting enough. I always like a good story about a murder. However, I was not impressed by Marquez's writing style. I felt that the book was really too...short or fast paced, which made the book much more difficult to read. If the book was just a little longer, and Marquez took a chance to tell the story much more slowly, then I wouldn't have had so many problems with this book.

The book Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a hard read. It is all about a small town and their story about what happened to a man named Santiago Nasar many years ago, and yet a few town members remember it like is was yesterday. He was murdered and for what might have been all the wrong reasons. It is all up to the reader to decide weather a man was murdered for a cause or not. The author takes you through a mans life introducing killers, family members and just plain old towns people that all somehow lead up to the killing that takes place with two knives that in a working day are used to slaughter pigs. The town bar where you usually only see men getting drunk to pass the time were where two men went to get an edge off before killing a men. Just common people in the town knew about the murder before the man that was being killed... shows how much people really talk in small towns.

This book was too long and challenging for my taste. Not that I don't enjoy a good hard read every once and a while but there was nothing to look forward to or to even make up for all the work that I was doing reading. The author used large words that might not have been common or expected but also seemed not to fit into the situation. He tried too hard to make a good sentence other then just one that you could understand. The book seemed to jump around way too much from the murder to the history to the present. I found it hard to understand where I was and what we were now talking about. I found this disappointing because I had heard such good things about this author.

The audience would probably give this book the same review that I did if not worse. I found myself having to go back and think about what I was reading not something that I have to do when I am into a book and reading contently. If you ever pick up this book make sure not to put it down because I am afraid that you might not want to pick it back up. There is no way in my opinion that anyone under the age of eighteen would enjoy this book or even pick it up. The only reason that I opened it was because I saw the word "Death" in the title. Younger children would not only find this a hard read but a waste of time. But to an older person it could be a treasure; something they really would enjoy... Unfortunately I found it difficult with his choice of words and leading to something that he already told you in the beginning thus giving away the whole climax. You can read this book at an older age but like I said before I strongly advise you not to ruin the experience by taking on something that you can not handle or just won't want to.

I had to read this book for my eleventh grade honors english class. I love to read when given a good book, however this has been one of the worst books that I have ever had to read for school. This year in class we have read The Great Gatsby (5 stars out of 5), Death of a Salesman (3/5), Fences (4/5), Winesburg, Ohio (1/5), and now this. It has no conclusion, is immensely boring, and I could not stand reading it! With books like these, it's no wonder that so many kids prefer video games and television to reading (with the exception of Harry Potter). Save your time and money and do not read this book.

In my view, this is an overrated work. Words put together on paper do not necessarily make literature. Marquez is good in describing situations, he paints with words. But whoever thinks that literature should contain messages between lines, does not have to bother to buy this book.