Open Love in the Time of Cholera at any page and be drawn into the steamy backwater of coastal Colombia of nearly a century ago. Stay a while, and find that familiar surroundings in which you read now seem alien when you look up. That is a rare gift.

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor,Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina.Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty-one years, nine months,and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.