The Fourth Battery

Although with some pieces irremediably lost, the work allows us to appreciate the break with the molds of Colombian narrative, to a degree hitherto unknown. In addition to a profound literary talent, which came to the fore in his initial novel, Cuatro años a borda de mi mismo, Zalamea Borda holds the indisputable merit of having been the first to recognize and promote the literary potential of writers such as García Márquez, Mejía Vallejo or Álvaro Mutis.

For many years it was thought that the original manuscript of Cuarta Bateria, the second novel by Eduardo Zalamea Borda, had disappeared in the El Espectador fire of 1952. Like the Phoenix bird, it is reborn to occupy its rightful place in the panorama of the Colombian literature, narrating rural and city history through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy in the turbulent twenties.