NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL

New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968. First Edition in English and First American Edition. The author's first book to be published in English. 8vo, publisher's original orange cloth over mustard coloured paper covered boards, the spine lettered in black, in the colour decorated dustjacket. [vi], 170 pp. A fine copy, both book and dustjacket in excellent condition. FIRST EDITION OF THE AUTHOR'S FIRST BOOK TO BE TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH. 'The work consists of a novella and eight short stories and was published to present the author to the English speaking world. The title story is a short novel, masterly in its scope, about life in a decaying tropical town in Colombia. The Colonel, desperately poor, is a beautifully drawn Quixotic character who languishes on the faded dreams of his revolutionary past, the false hopes of his pride and his one tangible asset, a fighting cock which has become a symbol for him. The stories also tell of town and village life in South America and are written with compassionate realism and wit.' Gabriel García Márquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.