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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 a poor, retired colonel (whose name is unknown) – a veteran of a forgotten war, he still hopes to receive the pension for which he has been waiting for years.

Every day he goes to the post office asking for his pension and each day he becomes more depressed.

The colonel tries to survive with a small cockfighting business, until his only son is killed while gambling on the roosters.

After weeks of suffering and misery, the colonel runs out of food, and the novel ends when his wife asks:

"So, what are we going to eat now?"

"Shit."

This novel is quite different from other García Márquez works, in that it doesn't fall within the magic realism genre (there are no magical events or characters).

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.

1 Film version

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

2 Editions in print

BooksEnthsiast.com No One Writes to the Colonel (UK paperback)
BooksEnthsiast.com No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories (US paperback)

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