Leaf Storm (1955) by Gabriel García Márquez

In Leaf Storm, Gabriel Garcia Marquez introduces Colonel Aureliano Buendia––although we did not actually see him––who supposedly wrote a letter of recommendation for the doctor whose death is at the center of the story. Did Marquez know the first time he wrote the colonel’s name that it would figure in a more ambitious novel that would bring him to world’s attention, and eventually give him the Nobel Prize?

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What drives a story? Most of the time a death and an interesting past. The more extraordinary yet familiar they are, the more potential they’ll have to tread a significant narrative. Here we have a doctor, a colonel, a priest, a child, a mother, and a whole town that could not forget, could not forgive, and would only be appeased by one form of revenge.