No One Writes to the Colonel (Spanish: El coronel no tiene quien le escriba) is a novella written by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez.

[1] The novella was written between 1956 and 1957 while the author was living in Paris in the Hotel des Trois Colleges[2] and was first published in 1958, in Mito Revista Bimestral de Cultura v. IV no.

[3] The novella is the story of an impoverished retired colonel, a veteran of the Thousand Days' War, who still hopes to receive the pension he was promised some fifteen years earlier.

The corruption of the local and national officials is evident and this is a topic which García Márquez explores throughout the novel, by using references to censorship and the impact of government on society.

In his memoir Vivir para contarla (Living to Tell the Tale, 2002), García Márquez explained that the novel was inspired by his grandfather, who was also a colonel and who never received the pension he was promised.