“This investigation of an ancient murder takes on the quality of a hallucinatory exploration, a deep groping search into the gathering darkness of human intentions for a truth that continually slithers away.” —New York Review of Books

A spectacular wedding, a sudden scandal, a (perhaps reluctant) murder to which an entire town appears to be an accessory before the fact, the exotic manifestations of guilt…

Three people are joined in a fatal act of violence—the bride, returned in disgrace to her parents only hours after the wedding; the bridegroom, who believs himself dishonored; the heedless young dandy, blithely unaware of his central role in the mounting drama. With the eye of an obsessed reporter determined to understand this pivotal event in the history of his town, the narrator re-creates the testimony of a chorus of friends, servants, shopkeepers, priests, and police, who, by refusing to depart from the routine of their lives, allowed the murder to take place—in fact, made the murder inevitable.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a dark and profound novel about the codes that men impose on women, and women on themselves; the curious notions of honor that can dominate an isolated community; the irresistible impulse toward violence; and the psychology of mass complicity. Unsettling, powerfully evocative, luminous with color, it is a brilliant performance by the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and an important literary event.

“As pungent and memorable as a sharp spice, an examination of the nature of complicity and fate… an exquisite performance.” —Christian Science Monitor

“By far the author’s most absorbing work to date. I read it through in a flash, an it made the back of my neck prickle.” —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

 
Gabriel García Márquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. He lives in Mexico City.