num_pages: 147
description: "A brilliantly moving tour de force"--A. S. Byatt, The New York Times Book ReviewAmid the lush, coastal tropics of an eighteenth-century South American seaport, an unruly, copper-haired girl and a bookish priest are caught in a chaste, ill-fated love affair. Sierva Maria, the only child of a decaying noble family, has been raised in the slave quarters of her father's mansion while her mother resides on a faraway plantation. On her twelfth birthday she is bitten by a rabid dog, and even as the wound heals she is made to endure therapies indistinguishable from torture. Believed to be possessed, she is incarcerated in a convent, where she meets Father Cayetano Delaura, who has been sent to oversee her exorcism. As he tends to her with holy water and sacramental oils, Delaura feels "something immense and irreparable." It is love, "the most terrible demon of all.""A work of considerable beguilement and edge...Garcí­a Márquez retains a vital and remarkable voice, and the pen of an angel."--Los Angeles Times Book Review"Captivating...Of Love and Other Demons evokes the texture of a civilization, while its emotional range, from the comic to the mystical, exhibits a reach rarely found in fictions on a larger scale."--The Boston Globe"Luminous...demonstrates that one of the masters of the form is still working at the height of his powers."--The New York Times
language: English
title: Of Love and Other Demons
titlecomplete: Of Love and Other Demons
characters: Sierva María, Bernarda Cabrera, don Ignacio, don Toribio de Cáceres y Virtudes, Abrenuncio, Dulce Olivia, Martina Laborde, Cayetano Delaura, Josefa Miranda
genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Latin American, Classics, Latin American Literature, Spanish Literature, Historical Fiction, Romance, Literature, Novels
ratings_count: 72840
places: Colombia
publisher: Penguin Books