Gabriel Garcìa Màrquez
L'amore ai tempi del colera.

What is the reasonable amount of time you should step back in the face of a more or less veiled rejection from the person you desire and are courting? A few months, a few days, a few hours, or just a few minutes?

Florentino Aziza waits fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days before Fermina Daza gives in (in my opinion exhausted) to his romantic and unstoppable courtship.

"Love in the Time of Cholera" is the exaltation of perseverance, a story of love from another era, when declarations were secretly written on little notes left in some hidden spot along the daily path to school, accompanied by camellia petals, dried leaves, locks of hair and, on certain occasions, even long braids, tokens of love and promises of eternal fidelity. Loves where fleeting encounters lead to idealizing one's beloved and, without knowing them, attributing nonexistent virtues.

But Florentino thrives on poetry and romance novels... he is not a man to give up in the face of Fermina's refusal when she realizes she only imagined, perhaps out of boredom or simple adolescent curiosity, a love that was nonexistent and therefore impossible. He doesn't give up even when the girl marries the most sought-after bachelor of the Caribbean, Doctor Juvenal Urbino, with whom she nurtures a "domesticated love," a feeling made up of small resentments and revenges, grudges and old scars, habits, and years of marital struggle.

Fifty-three years of waiting, hoping for the news of the marriage's failure or the doctor's death to arrive soon, but Florentino is not just twiddling his thumbs... he keeps himself entertained and practices with women of all kinds: very young Lolitas, widows, and prostitutes (by vocation or profession), adulterers punished by the jealousy of cautious husbands... All this without ever forgetting Fermina Daza, without replacing her, because he is convinced of the possibility of loving many people, all together, all in the same way, without betraying any of them.

This is love according to the Master Gabriel García Márquez...