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el coronel no tiene quien le escriba is a short novel written by colombian author gabriel garcía márquez, published in 1961
it's, in my opinion, the earliest of the garcía márquez masterpieces, a club formed by books as important as one hundred years of solitude (probably the greatest latin american novel), story of a death foretold and love in times of cholera
the book follows the days of an unnamed colonel living in macondo (the same city where a lot of garcía márquez novels are located), which has been waiting for his pension since the end of the hundred days' war in colombia. his other only hope of winning any money is a rooster that he heredated from his dead son and that he had been training to fight.
for being a garcía márquez novel, it's missing a lot of the things that made him so relevant in the latin american boom; there's basically no magical realism on sight, even though it's located in the same city where people were absorbed by god for being too beautiful (in one hundred years of solitude). the book prescinds of question and exclamation marks whichh kind of adds to this sense of despair that the colonel's life has. the book also deals with themes of censorship and corruption.
maybe it's because i read them very closely in time, but it slightly reminded me of the pearl, by john steinbeck. both have this kind of miserable feeling around their main characters, and even the story is somewhat similar (without wanting to spoil much of either book, in the pearl, main character kino wants to become rich by selling a pearl he found, while in this book the colonel tries to sell his rooster as a way to get some money while he waits for his pension)
garcía márquez called the book the best he had written; i disagree (from the four books named in this... review? or whatever this qualifies as, it's probably the one i liked the least). however, it's definitely one of his best (it's also his best short novel, depending if you count death foretold as a short novel or not). highly recommend it to anyone interested in garcía márquez or latin american literature. 9.5/10