Love in the Time of Cholera

Love in the Time of Cholera sets a moody yet magical vibe and brings the city of Cartegena to vivid life. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s writing is gorgeous even when not read in its original Spanish. While reading the book I could almost experience the languid, feverish haze one might dwell in, the delirium one might experience when struck by cholera.

 This is an unconventional romance that follows the doomed lovers through their respective lives before life finally brings them together in their old age. It’s not a particularly large book, but its depth and brooding quality is why I return… show more.

 If I could be a fly on any wall in literature, I would choose the cabin of a Colombian riverboat in the mid-1920s.

Almost my favourite novel, this romance between two doddery ex-childhood sweethearts has its roots in the Old World, but is not of it. It might appear in conventional frills parading the stock clichés of undying love, but underneath that lace it proposes, in all seriousness, something more subversive, more affirming.

We can have what we want, says García Márquez. But we may have to wait a lifetime to appreciate properly its worth. To be worthy of our… show more.

One morning, desperate to find a new rear tire in Cartagena, Colombia, I almost rode onto the film set that, overnight, had transformed the street outside the romantically crumbling hotel I was staying at. Years later, I watched the film and was transfixed. Only recently have I read the book.

This is a historical novel set in a time of great hardship, and it describes a country I enjoyed riding through on my journey through South America. Márques has a magical way of describing events, and although this book, as its title suggests, is a love story, in no way… show more.

Love in the Time of Cholera tells the story of Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza, who fall in love as youths before being separated by fate and society.

The novel spans 50 years and depicts historical changes and revolutions in Colombia, as well as universal human themes like love, aging, and death. Its style combines realistic and fantastical elements, with moments of dramatic irony that are almost too neatly coincidental to be true… and yet life imitates art just like that sometimes.

While politics, plagues, and pandemonium ensue, in the meantime people still live their lives, treasure their loves, and… show more.

I suppose it is inevitable that I list a book to which my own work has been compared (though I have no sense of having been influenced by it, at all). This novel is vintage García Márquez, and nothing is more luminous than the way he uncovers here the “outsize reality”—the mythic real—of everyday lives in Latin America and the Caribbean. The chronicle of a love affair that spans 50 years and finally escapes consummation after surviving a very long marriage and several hundred impossible liaisons, the novel offers a profound insight into the ways myth allows us to carry… show more.

Love in the Time of Cholera like Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu is about memory. The sense of hope redolent throughout this novel inspires one. Love can endure despite ageing. The book gives hope to romantics without being romantic. This story of Márquez is ageless, as old as ancient Greek and legends and chivalry and heroic, selfless acts. True love will help us overcome all the storms that life in its longevity throws at us. Márquez in beautiful prose and experimental narrative takes risks with reader credibility and succeeds as he did in the magic realism of his… show more.

This is a classic. No movie, even starring Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, can do it justice. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a master storyteller and has always been one of my icons. It’s one of the greatest love stories of all time. A love that lasts a lifetime. The writing is beyond amazing, as only GGM’s can be. His metaphors bring tears to your eyes as he penetrates the soul of his characters in a way few other writers do. There is love on every page. 

 This book has dipped in and out of my life at different ages, and each time it has a different resonance for me. I guess it taught me at an early age that love is not confined to lust or youth or even impassioned gestures but in the minutia of marriage and also – as the main plot is about an unrequited love of fifty years finally being consummated – as a tenacious ideal kept alive through hope. As an author, it’s a great illustration of visual and emotional complexity made simple through vivid description.