Which Gabriel García Márquez novel follows Florentino Ariza's lifelong love for Fermina Daza?

The Gabriel García Márquez novel about Florentino Ariza’s lifelong love for Fermina Daza is “Love in the Time of Cholera.”

Published in 1985, the novel begins with Florentino and Fermina falling in love when they are young and maintaining a secret correspondence. Fermina’s father separates them, and after she returns, she rejects Florentino and marries the respected physician Dr. Juvenal Urbino.

Florentino continues to regard Fermina as the great love of his life, but the novel complicates his idealized devotion by depicting his many affairs and the compromises of his emotional life. Fermina, meanwhile, experiences the ordinary joys and tensions of a long marriage before becoming a widow.

After Urbino’s death, Florentino renews his pursuit of Fermina. Their relationship eventually develops in old age, challenging the idea that romantic love belongs only to youth. The title works on two levels: cholera is a real disease in the novel’s historical backdrop, while the symptoms of passion are repeatedly compared with illness. It is distinct from “Of Love and Other Demons,” another García Márquez novel with love in its title.