En cada página se siente el coraje.

El título describe literalmente el contenido: es una crónica periodística de un asesinato que todos los habitantes de un pueblo saben que va a ocurrir. Se nos relata en lo que parece tiempo real, pero con la perspectiva de los muchos años transcurridos. A través de la narración de lo que ocurre en pocas horas, acabamos conociendo a todos los vecinos, ya que se van recogiendo sus puntos de vista y lo que pensaron en cada momento.

El realismo mágico de Gabriel García Márquez está presente, pero más a nivel de estilo que de contenido, ya que los hechos que se relatan son muy reales. Pero la magia de los ambientes macondianos está aquí:

La cocina enorme, con un cuchicheo de la lumbre y las gallinas dormidas en las perchas, tenía una respiración sigilosa.

También en la descripción de los personajes, numerosos y únicos:

Andaba por los treinta años, pero muy bien escondidos, pues tenía una cintura angosta de novillero, los ojos dorados, y la piel cocinada a fuego lento por el salitre.

El narrador/cronista, cuya identidad no se desvela, habla también de los años posteriores a los hechos y las consecuencias que tuvieron para todos los implicados:

De Ángela Vicario, en cambio, tuve siempre noticias de ráfagas que me inspiraron una imagen idealizada. Mi hermana la monja anduvo algún tiempo por la alta Guajira tratando de convertir a los últimos idólatras, y solía detenerse a conversar con ella en la aldea abrasada por la sal del Caribe donde su madre había tratado de enterrarla en vida.

Nadie escribe como García Márquez y hay pocos universos tan coloridos y apasionantes como el suyo. A quien le de miedo meterse en el laberinto de Cien años de soledad o en la densidad de El otoño del Patriarca, esta breve novela es una puerta de entrada fácil a un paraíso literario imprescindible.

Cronicas de una Muerte Anunciada esta basada en un suceso real. A partir de la boda de Bayardo San Román con Ángela Vicario, Márquez nos ofrece un relato corto pero brillante. Todos conocen las intencione de los hermanos Vicario, todos saben que se va a cometer un asesinato, todos tienen la posibilidad de evitarlo y sin embargo, sucede. ¿Por que todos tratan de impedirlo y nadie lo consigue?. De manera incongruente llega a convertirse casi en un espectaculo. Márquez no da respiro, nos pone en conocimiento de las intenciones criminales de los Vicarios por medio de ellos mismos y el posterior boca a boca de todos sus habitantes, incluso de las autoridade. La narración esta cuidada, especialmente, el lenguaje que es fluido, nítido y sencillo, de "pura elegancia. Con un final triste y emocionante que nos pondrá a llorar.
CALIFICACIÓN: 4/5

This is such a well-crafted book in its structure and language that I may have to re-read it now that I just finished it.

3,5

ما هذه الروعة.

جريمة شرف عادية يكتبها ماركيز بكل جمال وروعة. اُسلوب مثير يجعلك في انتظار الاحداث وكأن الجريمة حدثت قبل سويعات وليست جريمة مرت عليها أعواما عديدة.

كل القرية تعلم بأن سنتياغو نصار سيقتل . والمقاتلين يتفاخرون بأنهم سيقتلون بشكل علني. ومع ذلك لم يقم احد بمنع الجريمة او حتى تحذير المقتول او محاولة إقناع القاتلين بالكف عن قتله مع انه من خلال الاحداث كانوا يمتظرون من يقنعهم بعدم قتله.

اُسلوب رائع ومثير ومشوق.

“There had never been a death more foretold. After their sister revealed the name to them, the Vicario twins went to the pigsty where they kept their sacrificial tools and picked out the two best knives: one for quartering, ten inches long by two and a half inches wide, and the other for trimming, seven inches long by one and a half inches wide. They wrapped them in a rag and went to sharpen them at the meat market, where only a few stalls had begun to open. There weren't many customers that early, but twenty two people declared they had heard everything said, and they all coincided in the impression that the only reason the brothers had said it was so that someone would come over to hear them. A butcher friend saw them enter when he had just opened his innards table, and he couldn't understand why they were coming on a Monday so early, still in their dark wedding suits. He was accustomed to seeing them on Fridays wearing the leather aprons they put on for slaughtering.”

************

‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ is a novella published in 1981 shortly before Gabriel Garcia Marquez won the 1982 Nobel Prize. It is a story of the murder of Santiago Nasar, a young and well off cattle rancher. It is known from the beginning that he will be killed and the story unfolds back in time to reveal the circumstances of his death. After a large wedding in the town the new bride Angela Vicario is returned to her family home when he has declared that she was no longer a virgin. The twin brothers Pablo and Pedro vow to get their revenge on the man who dishonored her. It isn’t clear who he was or if it happened.

Bayardo San Roman, the groom who had rejected the bride, had shown up recently in the town looking for a suitable marriage. With unlimited resources he pursued Angela. The story is told by an anonymous narrator who reconstructs the events prior to the wedding. After an all night carousal the revelers are still drinking in the town square past sunrise when the Bishop passes by in a boat headed upriver. The twins are asleep on park benches with pig stickers rolled in their newspapers. During the course of the night Bayardo’s honor and machismo had been betrayed by a lack of blood on the conjugal sheets.

It is an enigmatic tale with questions unanswered. Although it is hinted that Santiago had an affair with Angela it is never explicitly stated. Perhaps more mysteriously everyone knew in advance about the plan to murder Santiago and yet no one warned him. The images of a town in Colombia are rendered simply but effectively and the suspense is taut. It was based on a true story told to Marquez by his brother. He draws on his earlier career as a journalist to paint a portrait of the narrator, who interviews town witnesses about what they had seen, reminiscent of postmodernist inquiries on the nature of truth.

************

Update March 6 2024: GGM has a new novel coming out a decade after his death. From the New York Times…“Gabriel García Márquez Wanted to Destroy His Last Novel. It’s About to Be Published. ‘Until August’ adds a surprising twist to his legacy, and may stir questions about posthumous releases that contradict a writer’s directives.”

گزارش یک مرگ..چیزی چندان فراتر از داستان یک نزاع و درگیری در یک شهر کوچک نیست..یک قتل با انگیزه دفاع از شرف و جزییات ان..و یک روایت جالب از زوایای متعدد..,شخصیت پردازی متنوع و داستانی با سیر مناسب,
مارکز شاید یک داستان پرداز ماهر باشد..مثل یک نقاش ماهر که خطوطی بر بوم می افریند و نیازی به فکر کردن ندارد برای افرینش خط بعدی..
با اینحال اما انچه که در نهایت تابلویی از مارکز میشود مورد علاقه من نیست,سبک نوشتن مارکز برای من مثل موسیقی پاپ میماند,مانند یک فواره ازار دهنده از احساسات ساده,گزاره هایی که مثل زنجیری میبایست خواننده را همراه کنند..و اگر همراه نشوی جادوی قلم از بین میرود..در واقع مارکز برای من اینگونه است,شعبده بازی با چوبی شکسته..
شعبده بازی که می توان اجرایش را دید و حتی لبخندی زد..اما نمی توان او را دوست داشت..

جريمة شرف في الجزء الأخر من العالم
لم أكن أتصور أن الشرف له نفس المفهوم في أمريكا اللاتينية.

ماركيز له اسلوب بديع جدا في سرد الأحداث و كانت هنا و كأنك تقرأ قصة بوليسية أو تشاهد فيلم سينيمائي.

المشهد الأخير الذي يصور مصرع نصار هو الأروع في الرواية و هو ما رفع تقييمها من ثلاثة إلى أربعة نجوم

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.

قصة موت مُعلن
أو بالأدق
قصة "قتل" مُعلن
يُعلن القتلة عن خطتهم للقتل
يعلم الجميع بها ، ويحاول الجميع منعها
لكن تتجمع مصادفات القدر كافة لتحول بينهم وبين محاولة منعهم لتلك الجريمة
القدر يجعلنا غير مرئيين

عندما شرعت في قرأتها، ووجدت أن الجريمة وسببها والضحية وحتى القتلة معروفين مسبقًا
تعجبت، ماذا ترك ماركيز لباقي الرواية إذاً؟
أكملتها على أنه لا بأس
ربما يقصد الغوص في التفاصيل، فالشر يكمن في التفاصيل
وبالفعل تحدث ماركيز عن التفاصيل
بل تفاصيل التفاصيل
تفاصيل سطحية، وأحداث لا قيمة لها !
وصف لشخوص الرواية سطحي، وعلى كثرتهم لن تجذبك أو تؤثر فيك شخصية ما

لم يجذبني إليها سوى فكرتها التي أخرجها ماركيز بشكل سطحي وهامشي
أول تجاربي معه، تجربة بسيطة وسريعة
لكن لا أستطيع منها تكوين فكرة عامة عن أدب ماركيز
سأكررها في عمل ما أكبر وأغزر من تلك

تمّت

I own about 70 copies of illegally-photocopied versions of this book so I can use it with my students in class. And unlike most books I teach, I read this one every year.

Why? 'Cuz it's an unbelievable text.

I firmly believe that Santiago Nasar is one of literature's greatest Christ-figures. Many of Garcia's books have Christ-figures, of course, but Santiago is Jesus with a twist. When the book starts, Santiago is portrayed as a bad man who is wasteful and immoral and violent. When he is fingered for taking the virginity of a non-whore, any reader would believe in his guilt.

But by the end of the book, it is obvious that Santiago did not commit the crime (Garcia hides the line where this is stated unequivocally, but it is there). But he is killed nonetheless (multiple times, actually) and the entire town, who did not stop the attack on Santiago, feels guilty for their inaction for the next twenty years.

It's such a brilliant idea that is told so exquisitely, that I can't think of a better sub-100 page book to read over a two day period. And my students can't, either, as I have never had a disappointed student. Ever.