Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Vintage, $14.95)

Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, is best known for his sprawling family epic One Hundred Years of Solitude. I read parts of that novel in Spanish in college, and a few years ago I attempted to read the English translation. Even though the language and the Magic realism (blending magical elements into a realistic setting) captivated me, I never fell in love with the characters or the headache-inducing intricacies of the multigenerational family tree.

Fearing a repeat of Solitude, I put off reading Garcia Marquez's 1988 novel Love in the Time of Cholera for years. This week, after removing it from its dust-gathering slot on my bookshelf, I was thrilled to discover a gorgeously written, shamelessly romantic novel that - thanks to the author's constant dry wit - never gets bogged down in syrupy storytelling. Set in a South American country on the Caribbean coast, it takes place between the late 1800s and about 1930, chronicling Florentino Ariza's 50 year campaign to win back the love of his teenage sweetheart, Fermina Daza, despite the fact that she's in a reasonably solid marriage with the respected Dr. Juvenal Urbino. The title refers to the cholera epidemics that rage throughout South America (though Dr. Juvenal Urbino safeguards his region against the disease by enforcing top-notch sanitation practices). The whole book is a treat, though the last 50 pages showcase a truly enchanting and startling vision of the endurance of true love and the atrocities committed against nature in the name of technological progress.

In November New Line Cinema releases a film adaptation directed by Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). Javier Bardem, Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace) and Benjamin Bratt lead the cast.