In 1955 Garcia Marquez was working for El Espectador a newspaper in Bogota when in February of that year eight crew members of the Caldas a Colombian destroyer were washed overboard and disappeared. Ten days later one of them turned up barely alive on a deserted beach in northern Colombia. This book which originally appeared as a series of newspaper articles is Garcia Marquez s account of that sailor s ordeal. Translated by Randolf Hogan.