Notes

The author is the winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature for his novels and short stories. When a witch doctor appears on the Marquis de Casalduero's doorstep prophesizing a plague of rabies in their Colombian seaport, he dismisses her claims - until he hears that his young daughter, Sierva Maria, was one of the four people bitten by a rabid dog, and the only one to survive.