“Love in the Time of Cholera” is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, first published in Spanish in 1985.
The story takes place in an unnamed Caribbean port town during the late 19th century, and follows the lives of three characters: Florentino Ariza, Fermina Daza, and Dr. Juvenal Urbino.
Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth, and try to pursue each other despite obstacles. However, Daza is eventually persuaded to marry the young, well-bred and educated Dr. Urbino instead.
For 51 years, nine months and four days, Florentino pines for Fermina, never quite forgetting his first love.
When Dr. Urbino suddenly dies after 50 years of marriage, Florentino grabs the opportunity and declares his lingering love, beginning a love affair. They travel together on a riverboat, yet Florentino remains haunted by Fermina’s long life spent with her late husband.
In the novel, which intertwines themes of love, illness and mortality, Marquez’s characters are complex and far from perfect.
“Love in the Time of Cholera” is a rich and complex tale that explores its ideas through lyrical prose, vivid descriptions and memorable characters, making it a beloved classic of Latin American literature.
Marquez was a renowned novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and screenwriter, widely regarded as one of the most significant and influential writers of the 20th century, and known for his use of magical realism, a literary style that blends fantastic and realistic elements.
His other notable works include “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” and “The Autumn of the Patriarch.”
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982 for his “novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts.”
