No One Writes to the Colonel

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No One Writes to the Colonel

Author	Gabriel García Márquez
Original title (if not in English)	El coronel no tiene quien le escriba
Translator	J.S. Bernstein
Country	Colombia
Language	Spanish
Genre(s)	Novella
Publisher	Harper & Row (Eng. trans.)
Released	1961 (Eng. trans. 1 September 1968)
Media Type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-06-011417-7 (hardback first Eng. edition)

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

Contents 1 Plot introduction 2 Literary significance & criticism 3 Film, TV or theatrical adaptations 4 Release details

[edit] Plot introduction

The novel, first published in 1961, is the story of an impoverished, retired colonel, a veteran of the Thousand Days 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 colonel preparing to go to the funeral of a town musician whose death is notable because he was the first to die from natural causes in many years. The novel is set during the years of "La Violencia" in Colombia, when martial law and censorship prevailed.

[edit] Literary significance & criticism

This novel is different from other García Márquez works, in that it doesn't fall within the magic realism genre (there are no magical events). The main characters of the novel are not named, adding to the feeling of insignificance of an individual living in Colombia . The colonel and his wife, who have lost their son to political repression, are struggling with poverty and financial instability. The corruption of the local and national officials is evident and this is a topic which Márquez chooses to explore throughout the novel, by using references to censorship and the dominance of government on society. The colonel desperately tries to cling to his dignity and waits in hope of a better future. He and his wife gradually have to sell their inheritance from their only son who is now dead and eventually the only reminder of his existence is a rooster that the colonel trains to take part in a cock fight.

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. However, there is also speculation that Márquez took inspiration from his experience of unemployment in 1956 after the newspaper he had been working for had shut down. The daily lives he witnessed during this time are said to be one of his inspirations for this novel.

[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

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

[edit] Release details

• 1968, USA, Harper & Row ISBN 0-06-011417-7, Pub date 1 September 1968, hardback (Eng. trans 1st edition)
• 1996, UK, Penguin Books ISBN 0-14-015749-2, Pub date 29 February 1996, paperback (as No One Writes to the Colonel)
• 1976, USA, HarperPerennial ISBN 0-06-090700-2, Pub date ? August 1979, paperback (as No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories)

The Work of Gabriel García Márquez
Novels The Evil Hour, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Love in the Time of Cholera, The General in his Labyrinth, Of Love and Other Demons
Short Stories: Leaf Storm, No One Writes to the Colonel, Big Mama's Funeral, The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and her Heartless Grandmother, Strange Pilgrims, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, For The Sake of A Country Within Reach Of The Children, Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Non-Fiction The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, Clandestine in Chile:The Adventures of Miguel Littin, News of a Kidnapping, Living to Tell the Tale