Literary World Buzzes Over New Book by Professor Nadia Celis

In his manuscript, García Márquez said that he was compelled to tell the story when he found out that Margarita and the husband had reunited. At that moment, "he realized that what he had thought was the story of a horrendous crime was actually the secret story of a terrible love," Celis said. This is also the origin of her book's title.

Though García Márquez has said he wanted his novel to implicate an entire town in the bloodshed, he ended up emphasizing an unfortunate angle of the story, according to Celis. His version leans into the idea that the bride lies about to whom she had lost her virginity, and by so doing, condemns a young man to death.

"Everyone in town will tell you she was lying, because the story in the book became so embedded in everyone's memory that they can no longer distinguish fact from fiction," Celis said. "So in the novel, and in reality, she is the one everyone blames. You go back to the town, and go back to Colombia, everyone will tell you this is a story about a man unfairly killed because of a woman's lie."

"The story that lasts is the story that blames her. It is very easy for society to blame the woman," she added.

When Celis initially launched her research project in 2016, she had wanted to explore the role of love and violence in García Marquez's novels-the way either, or both, is deployed to subdue women and neutralize their "unruly desires." Indeed, the two come together very frequently; female characters "are educated into love by violence," Celis observed.

"Love," she continued, "is the ticket that guarantees that women will willingly accept the position as subordinate to men and to their desires. Love is the artifact in these patriarchal societies that guarantees that women will surrender their own autonomy and desires and will even feel 'happy' about this."

With this in mind, Celis was struck by the narrative arc of García Márquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, particularly its ending. Long after the main character's rejection by her wealthy husband-to-be and the murder of her alleged lover, she ends up happily coupled with the man. Despite being raped, shamed, and traumatized by him, "she realizes she is crazy in love with him and writes thousands of letters to make him come back to her, with the unopened letters under his arm," Celis said. The idea that such ending could be based on a true story was a possibility that she could not leave be without investigating.

Celis stresses that her motive is not to harshly judge or condemn García Márquez. "I think there is tremendous potential for society when we look at his books from a critical perspective, especially his portrayals of patriarchy," she explained. "There is a lot to question, and García Márquez's work is an instrument, a tool, for me."