A CLASSIC STORY OF ENDURING LOVE FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR 'It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love'Fifty-one years, nine months and four days have passed since Fermina Daza rebuffed hopeless romantic Florentino Ariza's impassioned advances and married Dr Juvenal Urbino instead. During that half-century, Flornetino has fallen into the arms of many delighted women, but has loved none but Fermina.When Fermina's husband is killed trying to retrieve his pet parrot from a mango tree, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find new life in the twilight of their lives?'The most important writer of fiction in any language' Bill Clinton'An exquisite writer, wise, compassionate and extremely funny' Sunday Telegraph'An amazing celebration of the many kinds of love between men and women' The Times

One of this century's most evocative writers, A delight. The interlocking of the stories, the fantastical and obsessional aspects of Márquez have never been better shown.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1927. He studied at the National University of Colombia in Bogotá, and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas and New York. He is the author of several novels and collections of stories, including Eyes of a Blue Dog (1947), Leaf Storm (1955), No One Writesto the Colonel (1958), In Evil Hour (1962), Big Mama's Funeral (1962), One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Innocent Erendira and Other Stories (1972), The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), The General in His Labyrinth (1989), Strange Pilgrims (1992), Of Love and Other Demons (1994) and Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2005). Many of his books arepublished by Penguin. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Gabriel Garcia Marquez died in 2014.