Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Marquez 2014)

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+++

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.