Books - No One Writes to the Colonel

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No One Writes to the Colonel (from the Spanish original El coronel no tiene quien le escriba) is a short novel written by the Colombian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez.

The novel, first published in 1961, is the story of an impoverished, retired colonel, a veteran of the Thousand days civil war, who still hopes to receive the pension he was promised some fifteen years earlier. The colonel lives with his asthmatic wife in a small village under martial law. The action opens with the coronel preparing to go to the funeral of a town musician whose death is notable because it is the first from natural causes in many years. The novel is set during the years of "La Violencia" in Colombia, when martial law and censorship prevailed.

Each Friday when his village receives mail, he goes to the post office expecting his pension and each time returns emptyhanded. "No one writes to the colonel" says the postmaster.

The colonel and his wife are in desperate financial straits. They barely survive and are waiting for the big cockfight, with the rooster that was raised by their only son (who was shot during a cockfight for distributing censured literature).

This novel is quite different from other García Márquez works, in that it doesn't fall within the magic realism genre (there are few magical events). Its main characters are not named nor is the village. The corruption of the local and national officials is evident. The coronel clings to his dignity and hope.

In his memoir Vivir para contarla (2002) (English translation:Living to Tell the Tale
), García Márquez explained that the novel was inspired by his grandfather, who was also a colonel and who never received the pension he was promised.

Film version

A motion picture based on the novel was made in 1999. Directed by Arturo Ripstein, it stars Fernando Luján as the colonel.

Editions in print

ISBN 0140157492 No One Writes to the Colonel (UK paperback)
ISBN 0060907002 No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories (US paperback)

Category:1961 books Category:Colombian literature Category:Novels

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