El amor en los tiempos del cólera (or Love in the Time of Cholera) is a novel written by Gabriel García Márquez. Released in 1985, it tells of the amorous adventures of a man who tries to reignite a romance with an old flame.
Characters[]
- Florentina Ariza
- Fermina Daza
- Dr. Juvenal Urbino
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
The "aromatic fumes" of a lover's poison lead the way into the story of an unrequited love that survives fifty-one years, nine months, and four days. Florentino Ariza, a man with the soul of a poet and the patience of a saint, has waited more than half a century for his love, the beautiful and "naturally haughty" Fermina Daza - since she revoked her promise to be his wife and married one of the city's wealthiest men, Dr. Juvenal Urbino, instead.
That half-century is filled with encounters and travel, births, deaths, and poetry. As Fermina Daza and Dr. Urbino build their life together, creating a love based on shared experience, Florentino Ariza builds his own life, remaining loyal to Fermina Daza in his heart, if not exactly faithful, succumbing to 622 "long-term liaisons." But it is only when Dr. Urbino finally dies that Florentino Ariza's real life begins.
Notable reviews[]
In reviewing Love in the Time of Cholera, Thomas Pynchon said: "The Garcimarquesian voice we have come to recognize from the other fiction has matured, found and developed new resources, been brought to a level where it can at once be classical and familiar, opalescent and pure, able to praise and curse, laugh and cry, fabulate and sing and when called upon, take off and soar." Similar praise came from Joseph Heller, who dubbed it "a luminous novel by a master of storytelling."
Anne Tyler said, "The greatest luxury, as in all of García Márquez's books, is the eerie, entirely convincing suspension of the laws of reality." The reviewer Michio Kakutani said "Mr. García Márquez displays a wise benevolence, an ability to see both the tragedy and humor of their situations."
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel García Márquez | 1967 | A novel by the same author with similar themes |
| The Unbearable Lightness of Being | Milan Kundera | 1984 | A postmodernist/magical realist romance novel |
| A Month of Sundays | John Updike | 1975 | A novel with a similar protagonist |
| Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | 1955 | A novel with a similar protagonist |
| Love in the Time of Cholera | Gabriel García Márquez | 1934 | A novel with a somewhat similar plot |
Sources[]
- Wikipedia
- Goodreads