The story occurs mainly in an unnamed port city somewhere near the Caribbean Sea and the Magdalena River in Colombia. While the city remains unnamed throughout the novel, descriptions and names of places suggest it is based on an amalgam of Cartagena and the nearby city of Barranquilla.[2] The fictional city is divided into such sections as "The District of the Viceroys" and "The Arcade of the Scribes". The novel takes place approximately between 1880 and the early 1930s.[3] The city's "steamy and sleepy streets, rat-infested sewers, old slave quarter, decaying colonial architecture, and multifarious inhabitants" are mentioned variously in the text and mingle in the lives of the characters.[4]
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