Skip to content

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

ClassicsLiterary Fiction
Pages
120
Published
1981
Language
English

Synopsis

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • From the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude comes the gripping story of the murder of a young aristocrat that puts an entire society—not just a pair of murderers—on trial. A man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place 27 years earlier, determined to get to the bottom of the story. Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to her parents. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover; and her twin brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Nasar for dishonoring their sister. Yet if everyone knew the murder was going to happen, why did no one intervene to stop it? The more that is learned, the less is understood, as the story races to its inexplicable conclusion.

Prose complexity
4/10

Vibe

DarkTense
Writing5.0Impact3.0Characters3.0Plot4.0Atmosphere4.0

Genres

Classics Literary Fiction Magical Realism Crime Short Stories Drama

About the author

G
Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez (6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, born in Aracataca on Colombia's Caribbean coast. He earned his living as a journalist long before he earned it as a novelist, reporting from Paris in the 1950s and later working in Bogotá and New York for the agency Prensa Latina. He is the writer most closely identified with magical realism, in which the fantastic is narrated in the same matter-of-fact register as th...

Characters

Santiago NasarProtagonist
Pedro VicarioAntagonist
Pablo VicarioAntagonist

Angela's twin brother, who joins Pedro in publicly announcing and then carrying out the killing of Santiago Nasar to avenge the family's honor.

Angela VicarioSupporting

Returned to her family on her wedding night after her husband discovers she is not a virgin; she names Santiago Nasar as the man responsible.

Bayardo San RomanSupporting

A wealthy, mysterious stranger who marries Angela Vicario and returns her to her family the same night, only to reconcile with her decades later.

All characters in Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Frequently asked questions

  • Is this book based on a true story?

    The narrative is inspired by an actual honor killing that occurred in Sucre, Colombia, in 1951, involving a childhood friend of the author. While the book reconstructs the events of that murder, the author fictionalized names and locations and incorporated elements of his own invention to explore the nature of memory and truth.

  • Are there any film adaptations of this book?

    A feature film adaptation directed by Francesco Rosi was released in 1987. The production was a multinational collaboration that featured the author's own contributions to the screenplay.

  • Why did the author break his publication strike for this book?

    The author had pledged not to publish any new work as long as Augusto Pinochet remained in power in Chile. He ended this self-imposed silence to release this novella in 1981, shortly before he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Read all 7 reviews