40 Fun Facts About Chronicle of a Death Foretold

In the real 1951 case the killers were ordinary brothers; what did García Márquez make Pedro and Pablo Vicario?

Twins made the killers a matched pair: Pablo is the elder by about six minutes, yet it is Pedro who first decides that Santiago Nasar must die.

What does Bayardo San Román carry in a suitcase when he finally returns to Ángela Vicario after seventeen years?

Her unopened letters, almost two thousand of them, come back with him in bundles. She fell in love with him only after he rejected her, then wrote to him every week for years.

After three years in jail awaiting trial, on what grounds are the Vicario brothers acquitted of killing Santiago Nasar?

Legitimate defense of honor was their lawyer's argument, and the court upheld it. The brothers had given themselves up at once and never showed remorse.

Which dignitary's boat does the town of Chronicle of a Death Foretold gather to greet on the morning of the murder?

The bishop sails past without stopping, though the townspeople have waited with gifts. Santiago Nasar had risen after an hour's sleep to be there.

Who bars the front door of Santiago Nasar's house seconds before he reaches it with the Vicario brothers behind him?

Plácida Linero, his own mother, bolts it believing her son is already upstairs. He is stabbed against the wood and staggers round to the back entrance to die in the kitchen.

Why does Bayardo San Román return Ángela Vicario to her parents only hours after their wedding?

She was not a virgin, he found, and he handed her back to her mother without a scene. Friends had coached her to fake the proof with a stained sheet, but she could not go through with it.

Which award did García Márquez receive in 1982, the year after Chronicle of a Death Foretold first appeared in Spanish?

The Nobel Prize reached him in December 1982 for novels and short stories that blend the fantastic and the realistic. He was the first winner from his country.

With the town doctor away, who carries out the crude autopsy on Santiago Nasar in Chronicle of a Death Foretold?

The parish priest, Father Carmen Amador, had once studied medicine, so the job fell to him. He counted seven fatal wounds and left the body in such a state that it was buried at dawn.

Which official confiscates the Vicario brothers' knives before dawn yet sends them home instead of locking them up?

The mayor, Colonel Lázaro Aponte, decides they are only bluffing and thinks the matter closed. They simply fetch two more blades and go back to their post.

Bayardo San Román's father once routed Colonel Aureliano Buendía, hero of which García Márquez novel?

One Hundred Years of Solitude lends its rebel colonel in a passing mention. General Petronio San Román arrives for the wedding as a celebrated veteran of the last century's civil wars.

In which South American country, the homeland of its author, does Chronicle of a Death Foretold take place?

Colombia is where the story unfolds, in a small unnamed river town. The book was first published there in 1981 by La Oveja Negra.

The unnamed town of Chronicle of a Death Foretold lies on a river near the coast of which body of water?

The Caribbean Sea is close enough that ocean-going ships once called there. Shifting river currents later cut the town off from trade, leaving it a backwater.

What reason does the wealthy stranger Bayardo San Román give for arriving in town six months before the wedding?

To find a wife was his whole stated purpose, and he soon settled on Ángela Vicario. She thought him conceited and never wanted the match.

García Márquez wrote Chronicle of a Death Foretold, about a killing he knew from his youth, in the form of what?

A journalistic reconstruction lets the unnamed narrator sift conflicting testimony decades later. The author had been a newspaper reporter before he was a novelist.

How does the narrator of Chronicle of a Death Foretold arrange the story of Santiago Nasar's last morning?

Out of chronological order is how the five chapters run, circling back over the same hours. The killing announced in the opening lines is not shown in full until the final pages.

Santiago Nasar's mother is known around town in Chronicle of a Death Foretold for her skill at interpreting what?

Other people's dreams were her speciality, yet she missed the warning in her own son's. He told her that morning of drifting through a grove of trees, an ill omen she overlooked.

What trade do the Vicario brothers follow, which supplies the knives they use on Santiago Nasar?

Slaughtering pigs was their living, taken up after their father could no longer work. They sharpened the blades at the meat market while telling the other butchers their plan.

What kind of store does Clotilde Armenta keep on the square, where the Vicario brothers wait for Santiago Nasar?

A milk shop is where they sit with their knives wrapped in rags, telling every customer what they intend. Clotilde Armenta begs passers-by to warn the victim, and nobody does.

Which fiancée of Santiago Nasar, arranged for him by their parents, shouts that she hopes the Vicario brothers kill him?

Flora Miguel feared he would be made to marry the disgraced bride instead of her. Minutes later her father told him of the plot, the first he had heard of it.

Which close friend of Santiago Nasar races around town trying to warn him but cannot track him down in time?

Cristo Bedoya had been at his side minutes earlier, then lost him when he slipped into his fiancée's house. Cristo checked the Nasar home, saw he was not there, and left without alarming the family.

Which craft does Ángela Vicario devote herself to after her family leaves town in disgrace?

Embroidery by machine filled her days in a remote village, where she grew into a wittier, more self-possessed woman. The narrator came across her there twenty-three years after the killing.

Which town, where García Márquez's father ran a pharmacy, saw the real killing behind Chronicle of a Death Foretold?

Sucre was the scene in January 1951, when a bride was returned to her family and her brother killed a friend of the author's. He waited three decades to publish the story.

Which translator of Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch also put García Márquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold into English?

Gregory Rabassa shared the inaugural National Book Award for translation for Hopscotch. Born in Yonkers to a Cuban émigré family, he had worked as a wartime codebreaker.

Which Italian director filmed Chronicle of a Death Foretold in 1987 with Ornella Muti as Ángela Vicario?

Francesco Rosi made it as a Spanish-language film from a screenplay he wrote with Tonino Guerra. Gian Maria Volonté played the friend who looks back on the killing decades later.

Which English actor played the rich bridegroom Bayardo San Román in the 1987 film of Chronicle of a Death Foretold?

Rupert Everett took the part opposite Anthony Delon, son of the French star Alain Delon, as the doomed Santiago Nasar. The film premiered in competition at the Cannes festival that May.

In 1995 choreographer Graciela Daniele turned Chronicle of a Death Foretold into what at New York's Plymouth Theatre?

A Broadway musical driven by dance more than song, it ran for 37 performances. It earned three Tony nominations, including Best Musical, and won none.

From whom does Bayardo San Román buy the house Ángela Vicario likes best, paying far more than it is worth?

The widower Xius refused at first because every object in it reminded him of his marriage. He gave in to the money with tears in his eyes and died two months later.

What does Bayardo San Román win by buying every raffle ticket, then have delivered to Ángela Vicario's home?

A music box inlaid with mother-of-pearl was the top lot at a charity bazaar. The showy gift did not win her over, though his charm soon won her family.

After the wedding party, Santiago Nasar and his friends carry on at María Alejandrina Cervantes's house, which is what?

A brothel with strict house rules, it also hosts the Vicario brothers that night. They drink and sing with their future victim only hours before they kill him.

Divina Flor, who dreads Santiago Nasar's wandering hands, is the daughter of which cook in the Nasar household?

Victoria Guzmán had been the mistress of the dead man's father and is set on sparing her girl the same fate. Both women know of the plot that morning and say nothing.

Santiago Nasar was modelled on which childhood friend of García Márquez, killed over a returned bride in 1951?

Cayetano Gentile was killed by the brother of a bride sent home on her wedding night. The author kept the crime but invented the bride and groom's reunion years later.

Colonel Lázaro Aponte promises to stop the Vicario brothers, then drops by the social club about which game?

Dominoes came first: he stopped in to check on a game he had arranged. The delay was one of many small lapses that left Santiago Nasar unwarned.

What is the name of the family ranch Santiago Nasar takes over after his father's death, leaving school to run it?

The Divine Face gave him a comfortable living at twenty-one. He carried a gun only when working out there in the country, so he walked to his death unarmed.

What was Purísima del Carmen, the stern mother of Ángela Vicario, before she married and raised her family?

A schoolteacher once, she raised her daughters for marriage and her sons to be men. When the bride is brought back, she beats her so quietly that the rest of the household sleeps on.

How is Santiago Nasar dressed for the dignitary's visit on the day he dies, instead of his usual khaki?

White linen, left unstarched, was his outfit for special occasions. His mother remembered him that morning as slim and pale, with his father's curly hair.

García Márquez had vowed not to publish until which dictator fell, yet released Chronicle of a Death Foretold anyway?

Augusto Pinochet still ruled Chile when the book came out in 1981. The author explained that he could not stay silent before injustice and repression.

The magistrate investigating Santiago Nasar's killing scribbles in his report's margins, betraying a passion for what?

Literature so absorbed him that he complained life had used coincidences no novelist would be allowed. He never found a single clue that the dead man had wronged the bride.

What does Pedro Vicario do once the court frees him, before vanishing for good in guerrilla territory?

He rejoins the army, where he had served before the killing, and is never heard of again. His brother Pablo stays behind, marries his patient fiancée and learns their father's trade.

What warning of the plot lies unnoticed on the floor as Santiago Nasar leaves home by the front door?

A written note from someone unknown had been slipped under the door, setting out the plot in detail. He walked straight past it on his way out.

Which basic detail of the fatal morning can the witnesses in Chronicle of a Death Foretold never agree on?

The weather splits them: some remember rain and cloud, others blinding sunshine. The clash is an early sign that memory, not fact, shapes the whole account.