Gabriel García Márquez
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman
Contents
Love in the Time of Cholera
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gabriel García Márquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1927. He studied
at the National University of Colombia at Bogotá 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. He is the author of several
novels and collections of stories, including
Eyes of a Blue Dog
(1947),
Leaf
Storm
(1955),
No One Writes to the Colonel
(1958),
In Evil Hour
(1962),
Big
Mama’s Funeral
(1962),
One Hundred Years of Solitude
(1967),
Innocent
Eréndira and Other Stories
(1972),
The Autumn of the Patriarch
(1975),
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
(1981),
Love in the Time of Cholera
(1985),
The
General in His Labyrinth
(1989),
Strange Pilgrims
(1992),
Of Love and Other
Demons
(1994) and
Memories of My Melancholy Whores
(2005). Many of his
books are published by Penguin. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1982. Gabriel García Márquez died in 2014.
For Mercedes, of course
PENGUIN BOOKS
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
‘Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no one else can do’
Salman Rushdie
‘An exquisite writer, wise, compassionate and extremely funny’
Sunday Times
‘Márquez is the master-weaver of the real and the conjectured. His descriptive
power astounds’
New Statesman
‘An amazing celebration of the many kinds of love between men and women …
among Márquez’s best fiction’
The Times
‘Few have written so passionately about the power of love’
Independent
‘A delight. The interlocking of the stories, the fantastical and obsessional aspects
of Márquez have never been better shown’ Melvyn Bragg ‘A love story of
astonishing power and delicious comedy’
Newsweek
‘The most important writer of fiction in any language’ Bill Clinton
‘One of this century’s most evocative writers’ Anne Tyler
‘No lover of fiction can fail to respond to the grace of Márquez’s writing’
Sunday Telegraph
‘An anatomy of love in all its forms. A rich commodious novel whose narrative
power is matched only by its generosity of vision’
The New York Times
‘Quite the nearest thing to sensual pleasure that prose can offer’
Daily Telegraph
The words I am about to express:
They now have their own crowned goddess.
LEANDRO DÍAZ
I
T WAS INEVITABLE
: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate
of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still
darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for
him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de
Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most
sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the
aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.
