"Chronicle of a Death Foretold" (1981) by Gabriel García Márquez

How much damage can mass apathy cause? Written in retrospective journalist style (23 years after the event), GGM recasts in "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" a real-life crime story where a man was murdered in the name of family honour by two brothers for taking away the virginity of their sister, who was rejected by her groom after the wedding for her lack of pre-marital chastity. The perpetrators acted upon unproven single-source accusations and blind rage and they announced their act publicly in broad daylight. The entire community did nothing to stop the crime, but why? Unlike traditional detective stories, this novella is not so much about finding clues and solving puzzles, but some collective soul-searching on the bystanders' parts on how their apathy and interlocked excuses allowed the crime to happen and left them in remorse for the next 23 years. The autopsy episode and the murder scene are materials straight out of Itchy and Scratchy. It might be terrible of me to laugh out loud, but GGM's magical realism was taken to an extreme absurdist and sarcastic level that it is impossible to determine whether the overall tone of the work is a tragic or a dark humourous one. The reader is left with plenty of information and testimonies to decide for oneself why the entire community did nothing - was it because the victim is an Arab? Because he is rich? Pure stupidity? Some hearsay? "Someone else would sort it out"? Nobody took the announcement of murder seriously? If you are after a Márquez digest, this novella is just as wondrous and tightly constructed as his epic works. It is a page-turner, as entertaining and thought-provoking as one wants it to be. There is a dose of straight up romance towards the end too. Perfect reading for a leisure weekend. P.S. a certain Sara Noriega is mentioned here in passing, is it the same one in "Love in the Time of Cholera", the novel to come in 1985?