Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is Gabriel García Márquez's brilliant novella about a murder everyone knew was coming but no one prevented. Based on a real 1951 incident in Colombia, the story investigates the killing of Santiago Nasar, murdered by the Vicario brothers to avenge their sister's honor after her wedding night, when she's returned to her family as "damaged goods."

García Márquez tells the story from multiple perspectives, piecing together the events of the murder morning like a detective assembling evidence—except everyone already knows the outcome. The technique creates a dreamlike sense of inevitability and collective guilt. The narrative circles obsessively around the central event, examining how an entire town becomes complicit in a death they all claim they wanted to prevent.

This 1983 Knopf translation by Gregory Rabassa (García Márquez's longtime English translator) brought the novella to American readers at the height of García Márquez's fame, following his 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.

About Gabriel García Márquez: García Márquez (1927-2014) was a Colombian novelist and journalist, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works pioneered magical realism and include One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.