Love in the Time of Cholera (Illustrated Edition)

by Gabriel García Márquez

Overview

A beautifully packaged edition of one of García Márquez's most beloved novels, with never-before-seen color illustrations by the Chilean artist Luisa Rivera and an interior design created by the author's son, Gonzalo García Barcha.

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs—yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593310854
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/27/2020
Series:	Vintage International
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	144,556
Product dimensions:	8.70(w) x 6.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Gabriel García Márquez, was born in Colombia in 1927, and considered one of the most important and influential figures in international literature. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, his major works include One Hundred Years of Solitude, Of Love and Other Demons, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and The General in His Labyrinth, among other works of fiction and nonfiction. He passed away in 2014.

LUISA RIVERA is an artist and illustrator originally from Santiago, Chile. The recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She now lives in London.

Hometown:

Mexico City, Mexico

Date of Birth:

March 6, 1928

Place of Birth:

Aracataca, Colombia

Education:

Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 1947-48, and Universidad de Cartagena, 1948-49

Reading Group Guide

"A rich, commodious novel whose narrative power is matched only by its generosity of vision." –The New York Times

The introduction, discussion questions, suggested reading list, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group’s reading of Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez masterful novel of unrequited love.

1. Why does García Márquez use similar terms to describe the effects of love and cholera?

2. Plagues figure prominently in many of García Márquez’s novels. What literal and metaphoric functions does the cholera plague serve in this novel? What light does it shed on Latin American society of the nineteenth century? How does it change its characters’ attitudes toward life? How are the symptoms of love equated in the novel with the symptoms of cholera?

3. What does the conflict between Dr. Juvenal Urbino and Florentino Ariza reveal about the customs of Europe and the ways of Caribbean life? How is Fermina Daza torn between the two?

4. Dr. Urbino reads only what is considered fine literature, while Fermina Daza immerses herself in contemporary romances or soap operas. What does this reveal about the author’s attitude toward the distinction between “high” and “low” literature. Does his story line and style remind you more of a soap opera or a classical drama?

5. After rejecting Florentino’s declaration of love following her husband’s funeral, why is Fermina eventually won over by him?

6. Why does a change in Florentino’s writing style make Fermina more receptive to him?

7. What does Florentino mean when he tells Fermina, before they make love for the first time, “I’ve remained a virgin for you”?

8. Why does Florentino tell each of his lovers that she is the only one he has had?

9. What does Florentino’s uncle mean when he says, “without river navigation there is no love”?

10. Do Fermina and Dr. Urbino succeed at “inventing true love”?

11. Set against the backdrop of recurring civil wars and cholera epidemics, the novel explores death and decay, as well as love. How does Dr. Urbino’s refusal to grow old gracefully affect the other two characters? What does it say about fulfillment and beauty in their society? Does the fear of aging or death change Florentino Ariza’s feelings toward Fermina Daza?

12. Compare the suicide of Jeremiah de Saint-Amour at the beginning of the book with that of Florentino’s former lover, América Vicuña at the end. How do their motives differ? Why does the author frame the book with these two events?

13. Why is Leona Cassiani “the true woman in [Florentino’s] life although neither of them ever knew it and they never made love”?

14. When Tránsito Ariza tells Florentino he looks as if he were going to a funeral when he is going to visit Fermina, why does he respond by saying, “It’s almost the same thing”? (Used by permission of Penguin Books.)

Editorial Reviews

A love story of astonishing power and delicious comedy . . . humane, richly comic, almost unbearably touching and altogether extraordinary.” —Newsweek

“A rich, commodious novel whose narrative power is matched only by its generosity of vision.” —The New York Times

“Revolutionary in daring to suggest that vows of love made under a presumption of immortality—youthful idiocy, to some—may yet be honored, much later in life when we ought to know better, in the face of the undeniable. . . . A shining and heartbreaking book.” —Thomas Pynchon, The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher