Nobel Prize winner and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez blends the natural with supernatural in Of Love and Other Demons - a novel which explores community, superstition and collective hysteria.
'An ash-grey dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst on to the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday of December'****
When a witch doctor appears on the Marquis de Casalduero's doorstep prophesising a plague of rabies in the Colombian seaport, he dismisses her claims - until he hears that his young daughter, Sierva Maria, was one of four people bitten by a rabid dog, and the only one to survive.
Sierva Maria appears completely unscathed - but as rumours of the plague spread, the Marquis and his wife wonder at her continuing good health. In a town consumed by superstition, it's not long before they, and everyone else, put her survival down to a demonic possession and begin to see her supernatural powers as the cause of the town's woes. Only the young priest charged with exorcizing the evil spirit recognises the girl's sanity, but can he convince the town that it's not her that needs healing?
'Superb and intensely readable' Time Out**
*
'A compassionate, witty and unforgettable masterpiece' Daily Telegraph**
*
'At once nostalgic and satiric, a resplendent fable' Sunday Times**
*
As one of the pioneers of magic realism and perhaps the most prominent voice of Latin American literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez has received international recognition for his novels, works of non-fiction and collections of short stories. Those published in translation by Penguin include Autumn of the Patriarch, Bon Voyage Mr.President, Collected Stories, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The General in his Labyrinth, Innocent Erendira and Other Stories, In the Evil Hour, Leaf Storm, Living to Tell the Tale, Love in the Time of Cholera, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, News of a Kidnapping, No-one Writes to the Colonel, One Hundred Years of Solitude,The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor and Strange Pilgrims.
From Publishers Weekly
Marquez's tale of the love between a middle-aged priest and a young girl believed to be possessed by demons spent five weeks on PW's bestseller list.. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In a Latin American port city during colonial times, a young girl named Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles?the only child of the ineffectual Marquis de Casalduero?is bitten by a rabid dog. Her father, who has shown no interest in the child, begins a crusade to save her life, eventually committing her to the Convent of Santa Clara when the bishop persuades him that his daughter is possessed by demons. In fact, Sierva Maria has shown no signs of being infected by rabies or by demons; she is simply being punished for being different. Having been raised by the family's slaves, she knows their languages and wears their Santeria necklaces; she is perceived by the effete European Americans around her as "not of this world." Only the priest who has reluctantly accepted the job as her exorcist believes she is neither sick nor possessed but terrified after being inexplicably "interred alive" among the superstitious nuns. Nobel Prize winner Garcia Marquez writes with his usual inventiveness, but over the years his prose style has crystallized and condensed. The result is a tale whose sharp social retort is made all the louder by the luminous, uncluttered telling. Highly recommended. -?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Description:
Nobel Prize winner and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez blends the natural with supernatural in Of Love and Other Demons - a novel which explores community, superstition and collective hysteria.
'An ash-grey dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst on to the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday of December'****
When a witch doctor appears on the Marquis de Casalduero's doorstep prophesising a plague of rabies in the Colombian seaport, he dismisses her claims - until he hears that his young daughter, Sierva Maria, was one of four people bitten by a rabid dog, and the only one to survive.
Sierva Maria appears completely unscathed - but as rumours of the plague spread, the Marquis and his wife wonder at her continuing good health. In a town consumed by superstition, it's not long before they, and everyone else, put her survival down to a demonic possession and begin to see her supernatural powers as the cause of the town's woes. Only the young priest charged with exorcizing the evil spirit recognises the girl's sanity, but can he convince the town that it's not her that needs healing?
'Superb and intensely readable' Time Out**
'A compassionate, witty and unforgettable masterpiece' Daily Telegraph**
'At once nostalgic and satiric, a resplendent fable' Sunday Times**
As one of the pioneers of magic realism and perhaps the most prominent voice of Latin American literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez has received international recognition for his novels, works of non-fiction and collections of short stories. Those published in translation by Penguin include Autumn of the Patriarch, Bon Voyage Mr.President, Collected Stories, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The General in his Labyrinth, Innocent Erendira and Other Stories, In the Evil Hour, Leaf Storm, Living to Tell the Tale, Love in the Time of Cholera, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, News of a Kidnapping, No-one Writes to the Colonel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor and Strange Pilgrims.
From Publishers Weekly
Marquez's tale of the love between a middle-aged priest and a young girl believed to be possessed by demons spent five weeks on PW's bestseller list..
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In a Latin American port city during colonial times, a young girl named Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles?the only child of the ineffectual Marquis de Casalduero?is bitten by a rabid dog. Her father, who has shown no interest in the child, begins a crusade to save her life, eventually committing her to the Convent of Santa Clara when the bishop persuades him that his daughter is possessed by demons. In fact, Sierva Maria has shown no signs of being infected by rabies or by demons; she is simply being punished for being different. Having been raised by the family's slaves, she knows their languages and wears their Santeria necklaces; she is perceived by the effete European Americans around her as "not of this world." Only the priest who has reluctantly accepted the job as her exorcist believes she is neither sick nor possessed but terrified after being inexplicably "interred alive" among the superstitious nuns. Nobel Prize winner Garcia Marquez writes with his usual inventiveness, but over the years his prose style has crystallized and condensed. The result is a tale whose sharp social retort is made all the louder by the luminous, uncluttered telling. Highly recommended.
-?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.