Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982 and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, began his literary career with the publication of The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor. In 1955, eight crew members of the cruiser Caldas, a Colombian warship, were swept away by the waves. Velasco was the sole survivor, drifting on a raft for ten days without food or water. Marquez tells the amazing story of the survivor's endurance, from his loneliness and thirst to his determination to survive. The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor was Marquez'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 struggle with sharks for a juicy fish, his hallucinations, his capture of a seagull he couldn't eat, and his inexhaustible rescue all have the allure of an archetypal myth. It reads like an epic work.

"A masterful narrative" - Daily Mail

"Marquez is a purveyor of marvels" - Sunday Times

Pages: 128, Year of Publication: 0306, Dimensions: 12.9x12.9cm