Chronicle of a Death Foretold Essay | Critical Essay #4

Chronicle of a Death Foretold Critical Essay #4

In this brief excerpt, Burgess addresses the problems of reading a translation, and of expressing an opinion different from "a world consensus." In this second situation, "dare one (the reviewer, in this case] be wholly frank?"

I have two problems in assessing this brief work [Chronicle of a Death Foretold] by the latest Nobel Prizeman. The first relates to the fact that I've read it in translation, and any judgment on the quality of Garcia Marquez's writing that I would wish to make is necessarily limited. Mr. Rabassa's rendering is smooth and strong with an inevitable North American flavor, but it is English, and Garcia Marquez writes in a very pungent and individual Spanish. The second problem is the one that always comes up when a writer has received the final international accolade: dare one be wholly frank7 Dare one set one's critical judgment up against what, though it...
(read more)