Oprah's Book Club Selection #59: LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, published in both English and
Spanish-language editions by Vintage Books. A major motion picture of
the novel starring Javier Bardem, Benjamin Bratt, Giovanna Mezzogiorno
will be released on November 16 from New Line/Stone Village Pictures.
***
ABOUT THE BOOK: Originally published in hardcover in English by
Alfred A. Knopf in 1988. In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermino
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. With humorous sagacity and consummate craft, García
Márquez traces an exceptional half-century story of unrequited love.
Though it seems never to be conveniently contained, love flows through
the novel in many wonderful guises--joyful, melancholy, enriching, ever
surprising.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: García Márquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in
1927. He attended the University of Bogotá and went on to become a
reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador. He later served as a
foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York.
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, he is the author of
several novels and collections, including No One Writes to the Colonel
and Other Stories, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Innocent Erendira and
Other Stories, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The General in His
Labyrinth, Strange Pilgrims, Love and Other Demons, and most recently
Memories of My Melancholy Whores, as well as the autobiography Living to
Tell the Tale.
ABOUT THE MOVIE: LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA (New Line/Stone Village
Pictures) Based on the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; directed by Mike
Newell from a screenplay by Ronald Harwood; starring Javier Bardem,
Benjamin Bratt, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, John Leguizamo, Hector Elizondo
and Fernanda Montenegro.
RELEASE DATE: November 16, 2007
