This content is from Wikipedia. We do not consider this content professional or citable. Please use your discretion when relying on it. GradeSaver also offers a professionally written study guide by one of our staff editors.

Setting

The story takes place in an unnamed port city somewhere in the Caribbean, near the Magdalena River. While the city remains unnamed throughout the novel, descriptions of it led one to the conclusion that it must be Cartagena, in Bolívar, Colombia, where García Márquez spent his early years. The city is divided into such sections as "The District of the Viceroys" and "The Arcade of the Scribes." The novel encompasses the half-century roughly between 1880 and 1930.^[2] The city’s "steamy and sleepy streets, rat-infested sewers, old slave quarter, decaying colonial architecture, and multifarious inhabitants" dot the text and mingle amid the lives of the characters.^[3] Locations within the story include:

• The house Daza shares with her husband, Urbino
• The "transient hotel" where Ariza stays for a short time
• Ariza’s office at the river company
• The Arcade of the Scribes
• The Magdalena River