Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a non-linear telling of the murder of Santiago Nasar. A man returns to the town where the baffling murder occurred twenty-seven years ago and is determined to figure out exactly what happened all those years ago. But his investigation is complicated by the realization that all of the townspeople somehow were complicit in the crime. After talking to many, he begins to realize that the townspeople each had had some kind of foreshadowing but did not intervene, oftentimes because of some misunderstanding. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a master storyteller as well as a premiere journalist, so as you might imagine, this novella is a compelling piece of Latin American literature.

"Many people coincided in recalling that it was a radiant morning with a sea breeze coming in through the banana groves, as was to be expected in a fine February of that period. But most agreed that the weather was funereal, with a cloudy, low sky and thick smell of still waters, and that at the moment of misfortune a thin drizzle was falling like the one Santiago Nasar had seen in his dream grove."

عندما يكتب ماركيز لا يسعنا سوى الدهشة لهذا السحر الذي ينبثق من قلم هذا الرجل , هذه الخفة الآخاذة والسرد الممتع والأحداث التي تتشكل في الرواية على شكل لوحة متناسقة تنبعث منها رائحة الأدب اللاتيني بكل سماته وسحره وتأثيرة الواقعي على القاريء..

رواية خفيفة ومشوقة , تشبه فيلماً سينمائياً تتشكل أحداثه ببطء وتصل الى النهاية المفتوحة التي لامفر من البحث فيها عن أجابات كثيرة ومتناقضة تكمن في جسد الرواية نفسها..

It's around 25 years since I last read a whole book by Márquez - the only one before this - yet his style, and what made it characteristically his rather than that of countless imitators, felt as familiar, too familiar, even, as if I'd read half a dozen of his books. Perhaps that's how the imitations agglomerate, or I suspect, because the novels one reads as a teenager imprint most strongly. Back then I didn't quite see what all the fuss was about, and I still don't, except that it's worth reading him to understand his influence on other authors.

Contemporary novels influenced by Márquez have been backing up in my reading list for a while now, waiting for me to read or re-read him so I get more out of them. (And at my age and given the sort of stuff I read, I should be more familiar with his work.) Last year this bothered me when I was on a bloggers' shadowing group for the International Booker - and again this year it has come up. Longlisted Mexican novel Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor is reportedly structured after Chronicle of a Death Foretold. (Plus, another book on the list, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree has been repeatedly compared to Márquez in reviews.) As Chronicle is so short - unlike a re-read of 100 Years of Solitude - I decided to read it before either of those two, and therefore finally get round to reading Márquez again.

So here it was, that meshing of the whimsical and the fated; those longish curling sentences of Márquez-via-Rabassa about people doing serious things, or having them done to them, described in a way which combines the quirky and the biblical. A smidgen too light, but on the other hand it would be more difficult to handle if it weren't. I found myself thinking a lot about Wes Anderson, especially his less deft films which ignore or gloss over subjects that are important to their settings (e.g. The Darjeeling Limited.) Because if there's any take on a major author which I'd not previously heard, and that Goodreads has bombarded me with repeatedly over the last eight years, it's criticism of Gabriel García Márquez's questionable sexual politics. Even when I was still quite resistant to identity politics, some of his work just sounded a bit too dodgy because of this (e.g. Memories of My Melancholy Whores) and I decided not to bother with him. But he's also kind of essential to Latin American literature, and there are novels which critique his. (It sounds like Hurricane Season may be one: practically everybody in the locality is implicated in a murder rooted in patriarchal values, as in Chronicle - but while in Márquez's book, the victim is a rich young man, in Melchor's it is a subversive woman, re-centring the adverse effects where they often fall hardest in reality. Chronicle is based on a real killing from 1951; Melchor is probably saying, all too justifiably given the horrendous situation with femicides in Mexico, that too little has changed in the region's attitudes to women in nearly 70 years.)

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is all about responsibility on an individual or small-community level: the oversights and accidents which meant nobody directly told Santiago Nasar that the Vicario brothers were out to kill him, until it was too late, and the failure by those with authority to recognise Pablo and Pedro - not gangsters as it would be easy to assume from the early pages, but average young working men in their village - were serious about it, not just talking with drunken bravado. If Santiago Nasar wasn't actually the first sexual partner of Angela Vicario - the murderers' sister who had just been rejected by her rich bridegroom on their wedding night - who was it? These are the issues that ostensibly matter in the novel. (It's never asked whether Angela consented the first time she had sex.) The Vicario brothers do seem to have hoped, on some level, that they would actually be stopped from killing Nasar, and it's strongly implied that killing the man in question, whoever he was, was excessive. But it's less clear (and now, more than in 1981, when Chronicle was first published, more readers want novels to be clear about such attitudes) whether - although the novel shows fallout from the overvaluing of virginity in women, and of traditional, inaccurate thinking about hymens - it is critical of the complex of patriarchal values and customs that lead to Angela's abandonment, Santiago's murder and bridegroom Bayardo's phase of alcoholism.

In Chronicle there are also tropes common in older literary or classic fiction, which are often criticised these days. The narrator and other men routinely have sex with prostitutes and it's a normal part of life for them. A male character met his future wife while he was an adult and she was still a child. (He jokingly proposes to her when he is about 20 and she at primary school, though they don't marry until 14 years later.) Obsessively and persistently contacting a love interest who appears uninterested, in this case over many years, is eventually rewarded with a positive response. (It was not in reality.)

For some, the dubious sexual politics will be reason not to read the book at all, or to give it a low rating. Others may care about these points to an extent, whilst the writing/translation and structure elevate the novel regardless. It could also be seen as an interesting examination of behaviour and motivations in an honour culture where modern Western values have only a partial presence.

Anyway, this is another Latin American classic about which it's obvious why a feminist author would write a response or retelling - also on the longlist is The Adventures of China Iron, narrated by the young wife of Martín Fierro, hero of Argentina's foundational gaucho epic.

I wouldn't necessarily expect a novel from 1981, and set decades earlier, to fit with contemporary left-leaning values, and ultimately it's Márquez's style - writing which has bowled over countless fans - that leaves me a bit meh. I mean, it's alright, I don't mind it so much that it would put me off reading more by him, but it doesn't leave me raring to, either. His characters often seem like romanticised archetypes more than richly-drawn individuals; there are books I really love which do this, but Márquez's are, so far, not among them.

جاءت التجربة الأولي لي مع الكاتب الكولومبي الشهير "غابرييل غارسيا ماركيز"، مع الرواية القصيرة "قصة موت مُعلن"، وهي تجربة أعدها جيدة مُجملاً.

يأتي اسم الرواية شارحاً لقصتها، فهي قصة عن موت أُعلن في أحد القرى، جريمة شرف، القرية بأكملها أصبحت على علم بمن المقتول؟ ومن القاتل؟ ولكن المقتول وحده من كان جاهلاً بما ينتظره.
القصة على صغرها، مليئة بالتفاصيل، والشخصيات، التي قد تجعلك تنبهر أو تمل، وللسبب نفسه، أن الحكاية الصغيرة تحمل كُل تلك الشخصيات، وهنا كان تميز الرواية، أن ترى القصة من مُختلف الجوانب، وكُل مرة تشعر أن هناك تفاصيل جديدة، ورُبما لا، مُجرد إعادة سرد للقصة فقط.

ورغم أن قصة الموت مُعلنة، إلا أن الفصل الختامي فاجئني أيضاً، طريقة الموت، وما تلاه، الوصف المُفرط الذي يشعرك بتدفق حرارة الجو حولك، ولون الدماء تراه بين السطور، الحزن الشديد، والحيرة، الخوف والجُبن.
كان هناك محاولات لمنع الموت من أهل القرية، ولكنها آتت بطريقة بائسة للغاية، وكأن هذا الموت أصبح قدراً، يجب على "سانتياغو" أن يتقبله، ويجب على الأخوة "فيكاريو" أن يُنفذوه، حتى لو كان ذلك عكس رغبتهم. فعلى الرغم من أنهم قرروا أن يقتلوا "سانتياغو" إلا أنهم كانوا يصرخون في كُل مكان يذهبون إليه بأنهم سيقتلونه، هذه ليست تصرفات أشخاص تنوي الشر، هذه تصرفات أشخاص مُجبرة عليه، وتتمنى أن يمنعهم أحد، ولو بالضرب، أو حتى القتل.

القصة قد تفتح تأويلات عديدة، رُبما عن المجتمع العاجز ضد التقاليد التي حُفرت في أذهاننا، وحتى أن المجتمع لم يُعطي الفرصة للمقتول أن يُدافع عن نفسه، تلك الحيرة التي رسمها "ماركيز" ببراعة، أن تكون مُتيقنا ومُتردداً في نفس الوقت، هل فعلاً فعلها "سانتياغو نصار"؟ أم الأخت "فيكاريو" تُخفي شخصاً ما، في الحقيقة، لا نعلم، ولن نعلم، فهذا ليس موضوعنا بكل تأكيد، ولكن موضوعنا كم أن المجتمع أصبح أخرس، وعاجز أمام التقاليد والعاهات، وحتى التأكد منها على سبيل التحقق، لن يكون وارداً، فقط أقتل من تشك فيه، ودع التحقق فيما بعد.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez bunu nasıl yapıyor gerçekten bilmiyorum. Edebi yönü kuvvetli kitaplar yazıp aynı anda bu kadar temiz ve anlaşılır olmaktan bahsediyorum. Dahası anlatım dilindeki güzellikten, sihirden bahsediyorum.

Santiago Nasar'ın öleceği kitabın daha ilk satırlarından beri belliyken, kitabı öyle etkileyici bir şekilde bitirdi ki.. O ölümü öyle detaylı ve şahane anlattı ki.. Beni hem bu ölümü önceden beri bilen hikaye karakterlerinden biri yaparak kendimi suçlu hissettirdi hem de sanki olaydan ancak son satırlarda haberim olmuşçasına şaşırttı, şoke etti. Aynı etkiyi Yüzyıllık Yalnızlık'ı okurken de hissetmiştim.
O kadar ustaca bir yazım şekli ki bu, yazar sizi bildiğini sandığınız bir döngünün içinde, kaleminin ucunda evirip çevirip istediği kıvama getirdiği anda bırakıveriyor kalemi elinden. Yani sanki sizin sokmak istediği o duygu durumuna geldiğinizi anlıyor ve bunu anlar anlamaz hikayeyi orada bitiriyor. Siz de duvara çarpmış gibi oluyorsunuz. Evet tam olarak şu anda böyle hissediyorum. Sürpriz bir son yaratmasına gerek yok etkileyici olması için. Kendine öyle güveniyor ki Marquez, eninde sonunda okur üzerinde istediği etkiyi yaratacağını bilerek yazıyor satırlarını. Ona hayran olmaktan başka hiçbir şey gelmiyor elinizden.

Bir insanın bilindik ölümü gibi etkileyici bir konu ile hikayeye giriş yapıyor yazar.
Hiçbir şeyden habersiz, hakkında dayatılan bir iddia uğruna tam da piskoposu karşılamaya gideceği gün uğradığı saldırı sonrası öldürülen Santiago Nasar'ın hikayesini okuyoruz. Onun öldürüleceğinden haberdar olan fakat bunu engellemek için hiçbir şey yapmayan mahalle halkından herbirinin o anda aklından geçenleri ustalıkla satırlarına yansıtarak muhteşem bir toplumsal portre çizip koyuyor önümüze.

Kitapta konu alınan bu cinayetin aslında gerçek olması, öyleki yıllar yıllar önce yazarın çocukluğunu geçirdiği kasabada yaşanmış bir cinayet olması hikayenin üzerinizdeki etkisini daha da artırıyor. Gabriel Garcia Marquez'in, eşsiz bir anlatımla bize sunduğu bu kısa romanı sadece tavsiye etmiyor, herkesin mutlaka okuması gerektiğini düşünüyorum.

Sevgiyle ve Kitapla Kalın,

n  Alıntılar: n
* "Bana bir önyargı verin, dünyayı yerinden oynatayım"
* "Kader bizleri görünmez kılar."

n  n


ما الذي جرى لك يا بني سنتياغو؟
تعرف عليها وقال :
-لقد قتلوني أيها الأم ويني

اول تجربة لي مع ماركيز وسعيدة جدًا بها ❤️❤️
الرواية رغم صغر حجمها ولكنها تحمل معانٍ كثيرة وتفجر قضية حقيقة وواقعية

قصة موت معلن" هي توثيق لقصة حقيقة جرت أحداثها عام 1951 في الريف الكولومبي, مسقط رأس "غابرييل غارسيا ماركيز", و تروي حيثيات جريمة قتل سانتياغو نصار على يد الإخوة فيكاريو انتقاماً " لشرف" العائلة بعد أن أعيدت أخت القتلة, "أنخيلا", إلى أهلها من قبل زوجها ليلة الزفاف عندما اكتشف أنها ليست عذراء.

كلنا نعرف قضايا الشرف ، الشرف الذي نحيا به
"قضايا الشرف هي وقف مقدس لا يقربه إلا أصحاب المأسأة (الشرف هو الحب) "

الروايةتدور حول قتل سنتياغو نصار ،كل القرية تعرف أن نصار سيُقتل اليوم ولكن هو نفسه لم يكن يعرف شيء ،" هو راح لقدره برجليه زي ما بيقولوا " ولكن هل أهل القرية هم السبب في قتل سنتياغو لأنهم لم يخبروه ،كأن الجميع تسببوا في قتل سنتياغو حتى أمه التي كانت سبب في غلق الأبواب
الرواية اسم على مسمى قصة لموت معلن ، موت من أول سطور الرواية حتى آخرها تعرف من القاتل ومن المقتول ولكن التفاصيل هي ساحرة خاصة مشهد القتل الأخير ، كأن الرواية بدأت من النهاية للبداية ❤️

"القدر يجعلنا غير مرئيين"

تعاطفت مع سنتياغو نصار كأنه قُتل بدم بارد ، كأنهم حاسبوه على فعل ارتكبه هو وحده أو كأنه اغتصاب وليس برضى الطرف الآخر في علاقة غير شرعية!!
بالنسبه للأخوين فيكاريو هل يمكن اعتبارهم قتلة حقيقون؟ رغم أن أهالي القرية لم يصدقوا لأنهم لا يستطيعون قتل حتى حيوان؟ هل الدفاع عن الشرف يمكن أن يجعل من الإنسان قاتل؟
هل سينسى ذلك الدم الذي تلوثت بيه يده؟ هل سيتخلص من عذاب الضمير ؟



"على الرغم من المرات الكثيرة التي دلكت يها نفسي بالصابون والإسفنجة فإنني لم أستطع انتزاع الرائحة عني "
تعقيبي على الرواية هو تفاصيل ليس لها داعي وكثرة الاسماء في الرواية (قنبلة اسماااء وانفجرت )