Gabriel García Márquez is definitely one of my favorites writers, it was with sadness that I received the news he passed away.
In he's memory I decided to talk about the first book I read from García Márquez. I was 16 years old and reading many Latin American authors at that time, and I chose "The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor" a non-fiction narrative of a Sailor who Shipwrecked for 10 days on the Caribbean sea before being washed ashore into Colombia, he's native land.
Later on I read many other books from García Márquez that impressed me far more than this little story, like the "One Hundred Years of Solitude" or the "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" that I highly recommend.
"The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor" impressed me at that time, a true story that you only think possible in movies or novels. The book, a real-life event story is full of drama and is an interesting introspection about solitude.
In the narrative you can almost fell the same sensations the sailor is describing, like the smell of the salt of the sea water, the smell of the blood of a bird he was trying to eat, also the hallucinations and existential freak outs, the fear of the daily visits of sharks together with the felling of hunger, thirst under a blazing sun, all in a bit more than 100 pages.
Though near death he reach salvation on a desert beach, and became suddenly a hero to the peasants who discover him.
The story is worth to be read, García Márquez spent 120h interviewing Velasco (the sailor), and the result was first published has newspaper articles and only later was published as a book.
Definitely worth to be read...
