Gabriel García Márquez’s novella was published against his wishes

A seemingly happily married, middle-aged woman, Ana Magdalena Bach, makes an annual pilgrimage to an offshore island to lay a bunch of gladioli on her mother’s grave. She does this every year on August 16th, staying on the island for only one night and following the same routine, until one year she meets a stranger in the hotel bar and goes to bed with him. This, in turn, becomes a routine, with a different, random man each year, a ritual that begins as controlled but turns her inner life upside down.