«Nadie volvió a saber nada del náufrago solitario, hasta hace unos pocos meses en que un periodista extraviado lo encontró detrás de un escritorio en una empresa de autobuses. He visto esa foto: ha aumentado de peso y de edad, y se nota que la vida le ha pasado por dentro, pero le ha dejado el aura serena del héroe que tuvo el valor de dinamitar su propia estatua».

Aunque es más un trabajo periodístico que literario se nota ya la magnífica prosa de Gabo. Lectura rápida y enormemente satisfactoria. ( )

This is a strange Marquez book - the words of a sailor telling a harrowing story of endurance - and one wonders how purely journalistic the writer is, and what he can't resist embellishing. ( )

This “journalistic reconstruction” of the story of Luis Alejandro Velasco’s trip from Mobile, Alabama, overboard, and back to Columbia suffered a little at the hands of an unimaginative translator. “The Story of This Story,” an introduction entirely by Marquez, was by far the most colorful section in terms of prose and description. The adventure of the story, however, was still engaging. As Velasco describes his time at sea, the detail is vivid enough to wrench the reader’s stomach with hunger, thirst, or pain. The last chapter, describing the aftermath for Velasco, crystallized his narrative voice and articulated elegant conclusions, bringing satisfaction to the contemporary nonfiction reader as the earlier chapters satisfy the adventure reader. ( )

The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (pp 106). This book is about Luis Alejandro Velasco’s 10-day float in a life raft after being one of eight men washed overboard from a Colombian Navy destroyer on its way home from Mobile, Alabama. Senor Velasco was the only one to make it aboard a life raft and, despite a four-day search, the only survivor of this 1955 tragedy. This is the story of his journey without food, water, or supplies, and his near miraculous survival. Over the course of the ten days he floated with the winds, and survived on part of a single fish and modest amounts of sea water, eventually drifting near death to shore near Uraba, Columbus. At first he was a celebrity, but became an outcast after his true account — at variance from the Navy’s — became known. This is afternoon’s read. ( )