The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor - Softcover

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0394754034 ISBN 13: 9780394754031

Publisher: Vintage Books, 1987

Synopsis

Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, started his literary career with the publication of The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor . . .

'On February 22 we were told that we would be returning to Columbia'

In 1955 eight crew members of Caldas, a Colombian destroyer, were swept overboard. Velasco alone survived, drifting on a raft for ten days without food or water. Márquez retells the survivor's amazing tale of endurance, from his loneliness and thirst to his determination to survive.

The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor was Márquez's first major work, published in a Colombian newspaper, El Espectador, in 1955 and then in book form in 1970.

'The story of Velasco on his raft, his battle with sharks over a succulent fish, his hallucinations, his capture of a seagull which he was unable to eat, his subsequent droll rescue, has all the grip of archetypal myth. Reads like an epic' Independent

'A master storyteller' Daily Mail

'García Márquez is a retailer of wonders' Sunday Times

As one of the pioneers of magic realism and perhaps the most prominent voice of Latin American literature, Gabriel García Márquez has received international recognition for his novels, works of non-fiction and collections of short stories. Those published in translation by Penguin include Autumn of the Patriarch, Bon Voyage Mr.President, Collected Stories, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The General in his Labyrinth, Innocent Eréndira and Other Stories, In the Evil Hour, Leaf Storm, Living to Tell the Tale, Love in the Time of Cholera, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, News of a Kidnapping, No-one Writes to the Colonel, Of Love and Other Demons and Strange Pilgrims.

About this title

Review:

Truth can emerge only through the honest lies of fiction. A gripping tale of survival. (The Times)

The story of Velasco on his raft, his battle with sharks over a succulent fish, his hallucinations, his capture of a seagull which he was unable to eat, his subsequent droll rescue, has all the grip of archetypal myth. Reads like an epic. (The Independent)

Of all the living authors known to me, only one is undoubtedly touched by genius: Gabriel García Márquez (Sunday Telegraph)

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 in paperback from Penguin from August 2007. He is the author of several novels 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0394754034
• ISBN 13: 9780394754031
• Binding: Paperback