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‘’He offered an enigma: a man registers at a hotel at ten at night, goes to his room, and the next morning the waiter who brings him his coffee finds him dead and rotting in his bed. The autopsy shows that the guest who arrived the night before has been dead for a week.’’

A (fictional) town in Colombia is trying to overcome the aftermath of a failed coup when a series of lampoons, revealing secrets and sins of the villagers start appearing every night. The results of this mysterious action will be severe as the mayor of the town finds the perfect excuse to declare martial law, enforced by armed brutes, and take action against his political adversaries. The lampoons do more harm to the town when the villagers start accusing each other, exposing dirty laundry, fearful of their thoughts, fearful of a community that will soon turn into a ghost.

''There was an ominous element in the composition of noontime.''
Most of us have associated Márquez with Magical Realism but In Evil Hour, he works his winders using omens and psychology. What could be more terrible than the feeling of anticipating an invisible threat? A life where everyone's watching everyone, the unavoidable curfew and the violence originated by the lampoons? The scenery is darkened by ferocious storms that leave carcasses lying in the streets and dead rats floating in Holy Water. Márquez, an excellent ''reader'' of the human soul, elevates the lampoons into symbols with dual meaning. They represent the very fragile boundary between open criticism and slander, between freedom of speech and sacrilege, and demonstrate how populists and dictators feed on fear and suspicion. The mayor is an acute representation of the tyrants who have long plagued Central and South America and the populist leaders that have plagued the European continent over many years.
Foreboding signs, terror, shame, mystery, sarcasm. Márquez creates a tale that is terrifying in its immediacy and relevance to our times when populists receive the vote of the ignorants. This novel may seem ''simplistic'' to the readers whose knowledge of Márquez is limited to A Hundred Years of Solitude and Love In The Time of Cholera but we should remember that skilled writers don't repeat themselves. And to use the word ''skilled'' to refer to Márquez is a frightful understatement. This is one of the most mysterious and realistic works of the literary master from Colombia.
''And all because when he was drunk he said he was here to guarantee the sanctity of the ballot.''
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ ( )

Read in Slovene under the title of Huda ura.

In Garica Marquez's classical Latin American village setting, shaming flyers appear, revealing the dirtiest secrets of the village inhabitants ... Who is their author and why are they distributing them? Social/political theme. ( )

13. In Evil Hour by Gabriel García Márquez
published: 1962
translation: from Spanish by Gregory Rabassa, 1979
format: 183 page paperback
acquired: March
read: March 9-11
rating: 3.5

This is maybe a really good short little novel you don't need to read. It's Marquez's first novel, but he left it in a suitcase and it wasn't published for a couple years (may have been written in 1955), and then when it was published it wasn't even as Marquez wrote it. The Spanish was altered to "proper Castilian" in the 1962 first edition. But it sets up an atmosphere and character set that would lead to several of his important short stories and later works and that's maybe where its main value lies.

The novel itself is enjoyable. It has a soft plot and seems to mainly be an exploration of a small fictionalized town (outside his fictional town of Macondo). The era is after a lot of violence in Columbia. The town is run by a mayor who led the military campaign to crush a revolt in the town. And characters in the town live in what felt to me a series of provocative power plays. The mayor trying to enforce a peace on the town he decimated, while manipulating his own fortunes. He works oddly with officials he appointed and the curious town priest, Father Angel, who lives a simple life of balanced compromise, which he takes out mostly on the movie purveyor. Each of these characters has his own dealings with the wealthy town families, who have their balancing acts effected by their own personal failings. And then there is the doctor, the movie purveyor, the circus master, the talkative barber, the curious town dentist, and the completely powerless Syrian merchants. The barber and the dentist are sympathetic with the revolt and the mayor has a toothache.

One top of all this is are the slanderous "lampoons". Individuals dark secrets, real or rumored, ridiculous or spot on, are written up and pasted on doors. The lampoons have riled up sleeping controversies, and marital jealousies and violent tendencies are surfacing. One missing aspect is that thing we kind of expect, the magical realism.

I never minded reading this and also never fully understood the direction and point as it's all unspoken and feels open to interpretation. Recommended for Marquez fans who have already read his later short stories and novellas.

2018
https://www.librarything.com/topic/288371#6418776 ( )

A solid story with a claustrophobic, hot atmosphere; but to understand this you need to really understand a lot more about South American politics than I do to get the satirical thrust. ( )