Love in The Time of Cholera is an epic tale of a young love that flourishes into a raging force that dictates an individual’s life.

Florentino Ariza is a young man who falls in love with Fermina Daza as soon as he first lays his eyes on her. After multiple attempts, Florentino is finally successful in talking to her. They nurture their love through numerous letters, back and forth, with the help of Fermina’s aunt. When Fermina’s father finally finds out about this, he forcibly takes Fermina away from Florentino to a different city in an attempt to make her forget him. But nothing stops them from communicating through telegraph messages.

However, when Fermina returns after years and meets Florentino, upon seeing him, she cannot believe how she could have fallen in love with him. She is disgusted by his looks and his reflection of poverty. So she breaks up with him and returns all of his letters.

And thus begins Florentino’s feverish life long pursuit of love. For all his life, through numerous ups and downs, he reserves his heart for Fermina. Even when Fermina has chosen a path that possibly will never lead her back to him, he remains strong in his decision to not let go of the love and keeps striving towards the life he has dreamed with Fermina.

Set in a city on the Caribbean Coast, Love in The Time of Cholera is an unadorned narrative of the realities of life. It is not a fairytale of rainbows and butterflies. It is a stark reflection of life against the backdrop of poverty, disease, passion, greed, and finally above all Love.

How did it make me feel?

I liked it. It is a simple story that makes you think about so many things that once you put down the book, you will feel perhaps it is not as simple as it looks at a first glance. The best part about this book, in my opinion, is that the author Gabriel García Márquez subtly examines life as it is versus life as it could be and both seem convoluted in their own way.

Another interesting thing that I found out about this book is that the word cólera in Spanish means passion. (Update: I later found out this may not be entirely true though, please see the comments 🙂 ) So along with the socio-political circumstances as an impact of the disease Cholera, the title attempts to scrutinize passion as the foundation of love.

This was definitely a unique love story that I’ve come across. Click here to get your own copy. If you use my link to buy, I may get a small commission which will help me keep my blog running! 🙂 Thank you for your support!

Have you read it yet? Let me know how you felt in the comments!