Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Spanish: Crónica de una muerte anunciada) is a novella by Gabriel García Márquez, published in 1981.

He returns home in the early morning hours from an all-night celebration of a wedding between a recent newcomer, Bayardo San Román, and a long-term resident, Ángela Vicario.

To avenge their family honor, her twin brothers Pablo and Pedro Vicario decide to kill Santiago using knives that they'd previously used to slaughter pigs.

Meanwhile, Officer Leandro talks with Colonel Aponte who, after leisurely dressing and enjoying his breakfast, proceeds to the milk shop and confiscates the brothers' knives, sending them off to sleep and calling them "a pair of big bluffers".

Clotilde is still concerned that the twins will find another way to carry out their plan to murder Santiago and urges Colonel Aponte to intervene further "to spare those poor boys from the horrible duty", but he does nothing more.

The brothers return to the milk shop wielding new knives, and this time Pedro expresses hesitation about their plan because he feels they had fulfilled their duty "when the mayor disarmed them".

He is repeatedly stabbed as he attempts to enter his home, over twenty times total with seven fatal wounds, as they discovered in an ill-performed autopsy performed by the priest.

The Vicario twins spend three years in prison awaiting trial but are acquitted in court, after which Pablo marries his lover and Pedro leaves for the armed forces.

García Márquez heard the story of a young couple that got married in Sucre and, on the day following their wedding, the groom rejected the bride due to her lack of virginity.

[2] For one, in the novella, it is never clear whether or not Santiago Nasar had a prior relationship with Ángela Vicario before her wedding, whereas in real life, the bride had had sexual relations with her former boyfriend.

[1] Brief references are made to Márquez's earlier novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, with Bayardo San Roman's father being mentioned as having fought against Aureliano Buendía, one of that novel's main characters.

It was adapted for the big screen in the Spanish language film Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1987), an Italian-French-Colombian co-production, directed by Francesco Rosi and starring Ornella Muti, Rupert Everett and Anthony Delon.