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The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor is a work of non-fiction by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, originally published in Spanish as a series of newspaper stories in 1955, turned into a book in 1970 as Relato de un naufrago, and translated into English in 1986. The book's theme is the possible, but not necessary, moral reversion to a primitive, instinctual existence in the face of a sea catastrophe and consequent shipwreck and solitude. This theme had been explored previously in fiction by Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) and Voltaire (Candide), and more recently by William Golding (Lord of the Flies), Umberto Eco (The Island of the Day Before), Joseph Michael Coetzee (Foe), Jose Saramago (The Stone Raft and The Tale of the Unknown Island). A later non-fiction treatment of a similar theme can be found in The Last Strange Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Ron Hall and Nicolas Tomalin.
Gabriel García Márquez, the great Colombian author, began his literary career as a newspaper writer. In 1955, he wrote a series of newspaper stories about a shipwrecked sailor who nearly died by the fault of the Colombian Navy; several of his colleagues drowned a little before arriving at the port of Cartagena de Indias. This exceptional piece of newspaper writing that obligated him to exile himself from Colombia for a time, resulting in him working for several years as a foreign correspondent.
The story
A Colombian sailor wants to return to Colombia with the ship in its crew after a long stay in the United States. The ship is overloaded. Because of this, eight of the crew are washed overboard by a big wave, together with the cargo. After four days the search ends, with the missing declared dead. In fact, one survivor found a raft and remains on the open sea without food and without hope. After drifting with sea currents for ten days, the sailor arrives with his raft on a coast that he later discovers to be Colombia. He is received first with affection and later with military honors and much money from publicity agencies.
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