No One Writes to the Colonel

Gabriel García Márquez · 1927–2014 · Colombia

Originally El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (Spanish) · translated by J.S. Bernstein

Why it matters

A retired colonel waits fifteen years for a pension that never comes, feeding his last asset, a fighting cock, while his wife starves beside him. García Márquez's leanest, Hemingway-honed book: dignity rationed out one page at a time.

At a glance

Spare, restrained realist prose carries almost no stylistic difficulty of its own.