The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor

Con este libro, Gabriel García Márquez se descubrió a sí mismo como un narrador. Sin embargo, la intención primera era escribir un reportaje sobre un hombre, Luis Alejandro Velasco, que estuvo diez días a la deriva en una balsa mecida por el mar Caribe. El futuro Nobel de Literatura y entonces joven reportero que era García Márquez escuchó el relato de los hechos de boca de su protagonista y los transformó, tal vez sin pretenderlo, en un prodigioso ejercicio literario, una narración escueta y vigorosa donde late el pulso de un gran escritor. La publicación por entregas del reportaje en El Espectador de Bogotá supuso un alboroto político considerable -se revelaba la existencia de contrabando ilegal en un buque de la Armada show more colombiana, lo que costó la vida de siete marineros y el naufragio, más afortunado, de Velasco- y el exilio para su autor. show less

«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».

Continuing my accidental trend of novellas featuring sailors & seamen. (Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, John Steinbeck's The Pearl...)

Been meaning to read GGM for ages, but a mammoth novel can be intimidating. So when I saw this slim volume on the shelf, I picked it up. Discovering in the introduction that this was actually a true story that the author covered during his time at a Colombian newspaper, serialized in 14 parts, I was initially disappointed that this wasn't a whole-cloth creation as I'd assumed; certainly this would prove less compelling than the fiction novels he's gained such acclaim for.

How wrong I was.

This may be only a short novella, but it's gripping, harrowing, and at times gut-wrenching in its terror. The show more account of this one man's 10 days at sea, unprotected from the elements, devoid of food and water, at the mercy of the shark-infested ocean ... It's ruthless, and so vivid that I was forced to go online and verify that yes, this IS actually a true story and not something made up.

The final chapter is entitled "My Heroism Consisted of Not Letting Myself Die." Wow.

So worth reading. show less

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 show more the adventure reader. show less

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.

Luis Alejandro Velasco was a Colombian sailor who, in 1955, survived 10 days at sea on a raft after an accident, caused by naval negligence, which killed 8 others. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a young newspaper reporter, and published Velasco’s story in installments to great public interest. I can see why—it’s a gripping story and written in Garcia-Marquez’ beautiful prose.

Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez's re-telling of a ship-wrecked sailor's trials alone on a raft at sea for ten days without food or water. It was originally published in as a series of newspaper articles in 1955, turned into a book in 1970, and translated into English by Randolf Hogan in 1986. It is written in the first person from the perspective of the sailor and was actually signed by him, Márquez's name was not associated with the story until 1970 when it was first published as a book. It's an interesting survival tale with an interesting back-story in Márquez's career - the story's publication inadvertently revealed corruption in the Columbia Navy which embarrassed the dictator government which forced Márquez to take a show more job in Europe which opened new opportunities for him. The story is a natural "Robinsonade" and so appeals to that genre, all the more so because it is real, and involves a Nobel laureate. show less