Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. New York. 1988. Knopf. Translated From The Spanish By Edith Grossman. 351 pages. Front-of-jacket photograph: Poster Lady, by Edward I. Steichen, 1906. Courtesy of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, New York. Front-of-jacket pattern: Courtesy of the Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Carol Devine Carson & Chip Kidd. 0394561619. April 1988.
FROM THE PUBLISHER -
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ established his literary reputation more than twenty years ago with the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a legendary book that has been read by millions of people around the world. It was followed by other works, each of which drew new readers and new praise from the critics-culminating in the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Now Garcia Marquez has written a book that takes its place alongside that earlier, famous work, in the company of the true masterpieces of modern literature. 'It was inevitable. ' So begins this story set in a country on the Caribbean coast of South America-a story that ranges from the late nineteenth century to the early decades of our own, tracing the lives of three people and their entwined fates. And yet, at first nothing seems inevitable, for this is a tale of unrequited love. Fifty years, nine months, and four days' worth, to be exact. For that is how long Florentino Ariza has waited to declare, once again, his undying love to Fermina Daza, whom he courted and almost won so many years before. He has the bad grace, however, to make his declaration at the funeral of her husband, one of the most illustrious men of his time, a patron of the arts, distinguished professor of medicine, and leader in the fight against the cholera epidemics that once ravaged the country. Shaken by Florentino's bold speech, Fermina banishes him from her house. But that is only the beginning. With the craft, humor, and accumulated wisdom of a master of fiction, Garcia Marquez transports them back to those early days when they first met, courted, and were forced apart. He shows them going their very different ways-Florentino with his poetry, his rise to prominence in business, and his constant pursuit of women. And we see Fermina as she is wooed by the most sought-after bachelor of their time, Doctor Juvenal Urbino de la Calle; as they wed; as they experience all the events and emotions-honeymoon, passion, children, small betrayals, separations, dependencies, and adventures-that constitute a long, sturdy marriage. And then, at what might seem the end of their lives, Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza are brought together once more, in a meeting whose outcome is as fateful, as suspenseful, as any in literature. As the title suggests, Garcia Marquez has written a novel about love, love in all its guises: young love, married love, romantic love, carnal love, even love with the symptoms of cholera. More than that, he has written a work of art radiant with humanity that readers will savor and will remember for the rest of their lives.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. The author of several novels and collections of stories-including NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL AND OTHER STORIES, THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH, INNOCENT ERENDIRA AND OTHER STORIES, IN EVIL HOUR, LEAF STORM AND OTHER STORIES, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD, and the internationally bestselling ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.