Chronicle of a death foretold
Chronicle of a forebidden death (in the original Crónica de una muerte anunciada ) is a novel by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez . It first appeared in Spanish in 1981 and was translated into German that same year. The novel is set in a related setting to the one from Hundred Years of Solitude ; some people are mentioned at least intertextually in both novels.
content
The storyline of the novel takes place over a night and one morning in a Caribbean village. It is told from the perspective of someone returning to the village after 27 years.
A young man, Santiago Nasar, is stabbed to death, probably without knowing why. Apart from him, however, everyone else seems to know, for his murderers make no secret of their intentions; It seems impossible to all that Santiago Nasar has not yet been warned. The omnipresent first-person narrator does research long afterwards and compiles the "chronicle".
The day begins with the certainty that the twin brothers Vicario will murder the young Santiago Nasar in order to restore the honor of their sister Ángela and the family. Ángela had been rejected that night by her groom Bayardo San Román and sent back to her parents because she was missing her virginity . Nasar is named by Ángela as the cause of this circumstance, without his responsibility for it being finally resolved in the book; the narrator seems to doubt it.
The novel tells with documentary, almost journalistic accuracy the circumstances in which an entire village knows about the impending act of violence, but no one is able to prevent it, although even the future perpetrators act more out of a sense of duty than out of conviction, and even actually hope that someone will prevent them from doing so.
Suggestion
The novel is based on a real story in a family known to García Márquez. The day after his wedding in Sucre , the groom returned his bride because she was no longer a virgin. She had had sexual relations with her former boyfriend, who was subsequently persecuted and murdered by her brothers in order to restore family honor. Some publications suggested that García Márquez had been a direct witness of the crime; but he was not in Sucre at the time.
Film adaptations
- The novel was filmed in 1987 by the Italian director Francesco Rosi with Ornella Muti , the still unknown Rupert Everett and Anthony Delon (son of Alain Delon) in the lead roles under the same title .
- There is also a Chinese adaptation of the theme in A Blood Red Morning from 1990.
Secondary literature
- Maria-Felicitas Herforth: Explanations on Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of an announced death. (= King's Explanations and Materials. Volume 477). C. Bange Verlag, Hollfeld 2008, ISBN 978-3-8044-1881-3 .