Product Description

‘The colonel took the top off the coffee can and saw that there was only one little spoonful left’ Fridays are different. Every other day of the week, the Colonel and his ailing wife fight a constant battle against poverty and monotony, scraping together the dregs of their savings for the food and medicine that keeps them alive. But on Fridays the postman comes – and that sets a fleeting wave of hope rushing through the General’s aging heart. For fifteen years he’s watched the mail launch come into harbour, hoping he’ll be handed an envelope containing the army pension promised to him all those years ago. Whilst he waits for the cheque, his hopes are pinned on his prize bird and the upcoming cockfighting season. But until then the bird – like the Colonel and his wife – must somehow be fed…

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #137934 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 80 pages

About the Author
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927- ) was born in Aracataca, Colombia. His most recent book, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, is his first new novel to be published in a decade and is available as a Penguin Paperback. He is the author of several novels, works of non-fiction and collections of short stories, including Leaf Storm (1955); One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967); The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975); Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981) and The General in His Labyrinth (1989). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

Customer Reviews

A slow pace story, of injustice and violence
No one writes to the Colonel was written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Paris, when the newspaper where he worked closed and he resumed to poverty. It is the story of a Colombian Revolution Colonel who has been waiting for his veteran-pension for 15 years. He lives with his sick wife a monotonous but strenuous life, where everyday is a miracle to be able to survive. It is a slow pace story, to match the slow and sad life of the characters, to transmit the resignation and hope of this man. It is a story about politics and dictatorship. It doesn't make you feel sorry for the couple, but rather fell angry about that country, it's fake revolution and it's politicians. It is a story on injustice and violence, a man that after serving for his country is condemned to survive without money, trying to keep his son's dream and death alive.