Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Farm
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1958
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: Colombia
NATIONALITY: Colombian
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1958, in Medellín, Colombia; son of Héctor Abad Gómez and Cecilia Faciolince.
EDUCATION:Attended La Casa del Lago, the National Autonomous University of Mexico; the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, 1979; and University of Turin, graduated summa cum laude, c. 1986.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, novelist, essayist, journalist, editor, and translator. University of Verona, Italy, lecturer in Spanish, c. 1987–92; University of Antioquia Journal, director, 1993–97; the EAFIT University Press, Medellín, Colombia, editor in chief, beginning c. 2008. Also was seasonal lecturer at the Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli, Italy; worked as a journalist for the newspapers El Mundo, El Colombiano, and El Espectador. Also member of the editorial board of El Espectador, 2008; guest speaker at universities, including Columbia University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Verona, University of Turin, University of Cagliari, University of Bologna, and University of Florence.
AWARDS:1980 Colombian National Short Story Prize, 1980, for “Piedras de Silencio” (“Stones of Silence”); Simón Bolívar National Prize in Journalism, 1998; 1st Casa de America Award for Innovative American Narrative, 1998, for Basura; Best Spanish Language Book of the Year, People’s Republic of China, 1998, for Angosta; German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellowship, 1998; National Book Award; Libros & Letras Latin American and Colombian Cultural Magazine, 1998 for El Olvido que Seremos; Simón Bolívar National Prize in Journalism, 1998; Casa de America Latina, Lisbon, Portugal, 1998; WOLA-Duke University Human Rights Book Award, 1998.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including the New York Times, Newsweek, and El País. Columnist for the Colombian Sunday Edition of El Espectador. Works have been translated into Italian, German, Greek, Portuguese, Chinese, Dutch, French, Arabic, and Rumanian.
SIDELIGHTS
Héctor Abad Faciolince, who often writes as Héctor Abad, is a Colombian writer who grew up in Medellín. He studied medicine, philosophy, and journalism but left Colombia in exile following the 1987 murder of his father, Héctor Abad Gómez, by the paramilitaries because of his work as a human rights leader. Faciolince lived in Italy until 1992 and then returned to his home country. He is regarded as an accomplished “post-boom” writer in Latin American literature. These writers followed the authors who made up the Latin American literary “boom” of the 1960s and 1970s. The “post-boom” Latin American writers are noted for their going beyond magical realism.
Oblivion
Faciolince was expelled from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in 1982 for writing an irreverent article against the Pope. In addition to writing for periodicals, Faciolince is a contributor to periodicals and the author of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction books. Although Faciolince’s novels have been published in numerous languages, relatively few have appeared in English. In his book titled Oblivion: A Memoir, first published in Spanish as El olvido que seremos, Faciolince presents an homage to his father. According to World Literature Today contributor Adele Newson-Horst, Oblivion also “demonstrates the complexities of contemporary Colombian society.”
Writing in America, Dennis M. Leder noted that the memoir’s “title comes from a sonnet by the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges: ‘Already we are the oblivion we shall be.'” The poem was found in Faciolince’s father’s pocket the day he was murdered. In the memoir Faciolince points out the many human rights activities that his father undertook that made him a target. They included chairing a committee for the defense of human rights and writing numerous letters to almost anyone in power, even death squad leaders.
“While it is not surprising that death is a prevalent theme in Héctor Abad’s memoir, love provides an equally strong counterbalance,” wrote America contributor Leder. Faciolince writes about growing up in a household that included ten women. While his older sisters garnered much of the family’s attention, Faciolince notes that his father made sure to pay special attention to him as well, especially trying to instill in his son the principles he believed in concerning issues such as racial prejudice and shallow values. He points out that when one of his older sisters died at age sixteen from melanoma, his father was profoundly affected. According to Faciolince, his father subsequently took on a more accepting view of dying for a cause that was just. In the process he became less careful about his own personal safety.
Calling Oblivion “a rousing, affecting tribute,” a Kirkus Reviews contributor also noted: “The translators have preserved his facile and sophisticated uses of the language. One 205-word sentence, for example, unspools with absolute clarity.” Writing in the New York Times, critic Dwight Garner remarked that he almost quit reading the memoir after the first fifty pages or so. However, Garner went on to state: “Oblivion does deepen and expand. And, in its second half, it emits a primal yet articulate howl.”
The Farm
Faciolince’s novel The Farm is also published in English. The story revolves around the Ángel family siblings who, following their parents’ deaths, have different opinions about selling the family home. Pilar, Eva, and Tono lost their parents, who had long defended their home in the Colombian wilderness against guerrillas and paramilitaries. Their parents’ deaths lead to a disagreement between the siblings about their father’s legacy. Pilar and Tono want to keep the family home, known as La Oculta. Eva, however, wants to sell. The story is told from the point of view of all three siblings.
“The Farm is a sweeping, satisfying tale about the interplay of family life and national history,” wrote World Literature Today Online contributor Kevin Canfield, who went on to note: “With perceptive novels like this one, Abad is carving out an enviable niche in Colombia’s celebrated literary tradition.” A Literary Flits website contributor remarked: “The Farm feels like an epic read in that it has a large scope of characters and time periods.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
America, October 15, 2012, Dennis M. Leder, “A Death Foretold,” review of Oblivion: A Memoir, p. 34.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2012, review of Oblivion.
New York Times, April 24, 2012, Dwight Garner, “Honoring a Father’s Memory With Words Carved More Deeply Than an Epitaph,” review of Oblivion, p. C7(L).
World Literature Today, July-August, 2012, Adele Newson-Horst, review of Oblivion, p. 74.
ONLINE
DW, http://www.dw.com/en/ (April 1, 2017), Nicolas Martin, “Héctor Abad: ‘I No Longer Feel Like a Victim.'”
Eurasia Review, https://www.eurasiareview.com/ (February 26, 2018), Mohamed Chtatou, “Colombian Contemporary Literature Celebrated In Moroccan University–OpEd.”
Literary Agency Mertin Website, http://www.mertin-litag.de/ (July 6, 2018), author profile.
Literary Flits, http://litflits.blogspot.com/ (May 22, 2018), review of The Farm.
United Nations Website, http://www.un.org/en/ (July 6, 2018), author profile.
World Literature Today Online, https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/ (July 6, 2018), Kevin Canfield, review of The Farm.
Héctor Abad Faciolince
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Héctor Abad Faciolince
Born
1958
Medellín, Colombia
Occupation
novelist, essayist, journalist, and editor
Nationality
Colombian
Period
1991 -
Genre
Essay, fiction, non-fiction
Literary movement
Latin American literature
Héctor Abad Faciolince (born 1958) is a Colombian novelist, essayist, journalist, and editor. Abad is considered one of the most talented post-Latin American Boom writers in Latin American literature. Abad is best known for his bestselling novel Angosta, and more recently, El Olvido que Seremos (t. Oblivion: A Memoir).
Contents [hide]
1
Background
2
Writing
2.1
Columnist
3
Reception
4
Published works
5
Translated works
6
References
7
External links
Background[edit]
Héctor Abad Faciolince was born and raised in Medellín (Colombia), the only boy -among five sisters- of Cecilia Faciolince and Héctor Abad Gómez. Abad’s father was a prominent medical doctor, university professor, and human rights leader whose holistic vision of healthcare led him to found the Colombian National School of Public Health.
After graduating from an Opus Dei-run private Catholic school, Abad moved to Mexico City in 1978 where his father was appointed as Cultural Counselor of the Colombian Embassy in Mexico. While in Mexico, he attended literature, creative writing and poetry workshops at La Casa del Lago, the first off campus cultural center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
In 1979, Abad moved back to Medellín and pursued studies in Philosophy and Literature at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana. Later in 1982, he was expelled from the University for writing an irreverent article against the Pope. He then moved to Italy and completed studies on Modern Languages and Literature at the University of Turin in 1986. Abad graduated with the highest academic honors of summa cum laude, and his thesis on Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s Three Trapped Tigers was also awarded "Dignitá di Stampa" (a special distinction that literally means "worthy of publication").
Abad returned to his home town in Colombia in 1987, but later that year his father was murdered by the paramilitaries in a crime that brought about shock in Colombia. Abad himself was threatened with death and had to fly back immediately to Europe; first to Spain and finally to Italy, where he established his residence for the next five years. While in Italy, Abad worked as a lecturer of Spanish at the University of Verona until 1992. At this time, he also earned a living translating literary works from Italian to Spanish. His translations of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Siren and Selected Writings, Gesualdo Bufalino’s Qui Pro Quo and Umberto Eco’s Annotations to The Name of the Rose have been well received critically. He has also translated numerous works by Italo Calvino, Leonardo Sciascia, Primo Levi, and Natalia Ginzburg. Upon returning to Colombia, Abad was appointed director of the University of Antioquia Journal (1993–1997). Abad has been columnist for prestigious newspapers and magazines in Colombia, such as Revista Cromos, La Hoja, El Malpensante, Revista Semana, and Revista Cambio, the last co-founded by the Nobel Prize–winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez. He has also worked as a journalist for the newspapers El Mundo, El Colombiano, and El Espectador. He is a regular contributor to other Latin American and Spanish papers and magazines.
Abad has been a guest speaker at a number of universities worldwide, including Columbia University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Verona, University of Turin, University of Cagliari, University of Bologna, and University of Florence. He has also been seasonal lecturer at the Università del Piemonte Orientale in Vercelli. Awarded the prestigious German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellowship, Abad lived in Berlin from 2006 to 2007. He later returned to Medellín and was appointed editor-in-chief of the EAFIT University Press. Since May 2008, Abad has been a member of the editorial board of El Espectador, the oldest newspaper in Colombia.
Abad is an atheist.[1]
Writing[edit]
Abad started his literary career at a very young age. He was just 12 years old when he wrote his first short stories and poetry works. Abad was twenty one years of age when he was awarded the 1980 Colombian National Short Story Prize for Piedras de Silencio (t. Stones of Silence), a short story about a miner trapped deep underground. While still in Italy, he published his first book, Malos Pensamientos (1991) but it was only upon returning to Colombia in 1993, that Abad become a full-time writer.
Abad forms part of a new generation of authors that emerges in Colombia beyond magical realism. Among a notably circle of new Colombian writers such as Santiago Gamboa, Jorge Franco, Laura Restrepo, and others(1), Abad’s literary works often focus on the personality of the narrator and the act of narration in its pursuit of protection and power. The richness, plot, irony, permanent enticement of the reader, the intensity of his stories, as well as the seriousness of the social, historical, and human research behind his confessional narrative, stand Abad as a brilliant recreator of the contemporary Colombian society through literature.
Malos Pensamientos (1991) is a sort of James Joyce’s Dubliners short tales that offer vivid, witty, and tightly focused observations of Medellín’s everyday life back in the eighties.
Asuntos de un Hidalgo Disoluto (1994; Eng. The Joy of Being Awake, 1996) deliberately models itself on two key 18th-century works: Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Voltaire's Candide. Like Sterne's eccentric novel, The Joy of Being Awake is a bittersweet account of the life and opinions of a man at odds with himself, narrated in nonchronological fashion with plenty of entertaining digressions and the occasional formal game. Narrated by a character who is a 71-year-old Colombian millionaire, this work is a Colombian version of the Spanish picaresque novel. Writing at the end of his life, the narrator looks back on his life of debauchery – and the failure of his high pretensions – through reminiscences to his younger mute secretary and lover, Cunegunda Bonaventura. The narrator often gives two versions of a memory: first what he wishes had happened and then what really happened. Abad's novel has a surface geniality that barely conceals undercurrents of discontent and despair.(2) This novel is considered as one of the better works of fiction to appear recently in Colombia.
Tratado de Culinaria para Mujeres Tristes (1996; t: Recipes for Sad Women) is a book of uncertain literary genre that combines a collection of false recipes (coelacanth, dinosaur, or mammoth meat) with real recipes. The book is neither a novel nor a collection of recipes, but rather a collection of sensitive short reflections about unhappiness. With a love for droll turns of phrase, Abad blends melancholy with even-seasoned irony in well-composed sentences.
Fragmentos de Amor Furtivo (1998; t: Fragments of Furtive Love). adopts the framework of the book of One Thousand and One Nights in modified form. Every night, a woman delays her lover's departure by telling him stories of her past lovers. As a background, Abad portraits a 1990s middle-class Medellín as a city besieged by pestilence and disenchantment, the most violent city in the world, where the intensity of violence buried its inhabitants alive. As in the Decameron, Susana and Rodrigo lock themselves up in the hills, far away from the city pestilence, and tell each other stories that would save them from death.
Basura (2000; t: Garbage) is perhaps Abad’s most experimental work. It alludes to role models, such as the storytellers Kafka or Pavese who were angst ridden for life, and tells of a writer, Bernardo Davanzati, who tosses his works directly into the garbage can. His neighbour finds the texts and over time turns into an assiduous and diligent reader, to whom the many woes of being a writer are revealed. The act of writing and the role of the reader in literature are topics which are highlighted time and again.
Palabras sueltas (2002; t. Loose Words) is a book of brief cultural and political essays that were compiled from Abad’s most successful columns written for newspapers and cultural magazines.
Oriente Empieza en El Cairo (2002; t. East begins in Cairo) is a fascinating chronicle of a man’s voyage around the milenary Egypt. The narrator, accompanied by two wives, depicts two versions of the everyday reality of a mythical mega-city that brings memories of other realities, images, and stories lived in distant Medellín.
Angosta (2004). Echoes of Hyperrealism rather than Magic Realism are clearly present in this award-winning novel. In a fantastical parable of Colombian society, Abad describes a fictitious city whose population has been divided into three different castes living in separate sectors. Against the backdrop of the violent perpetuation of this system, a kaleidoscope of eccentrics from the ruling class is depicted. The novel recreates Colombia’s last years of violence with enormous synthetic capacity, complexity and efficiency, and a great deal of knowledge about the conflict. Abad provides us with one of the very best novels on the second wave of violence during the twentieth century in Colombia.(4) In March 2007, the Colombian magazine Semana published a list of the best work of fiction written in Spanish over the last 25 years. Among the thirty books to have received multiple votes was Abad's Angosta.
El Olvido que Seremos (2006; t. Oblivion: A Memoir). It took Abad nearly 20 years to get the courage to write this book about his father, his life and the circumstances of his murder by Colombian paramilitaries. The result is a cathartic and sentimental—but not clichéd—account of a man who fought against oppression, and social inequality and whose voice was shut down by six bullets in the head. The narration itself—which focuses more on the father’s activism and the father figure per se than on the man himself—was a process for the author; Abad goes beyond memory, opening up his own feelings and responses to his loss and depicts his father as the symbol of the ongoing fight against injustice, thus, illuminating and strengthening the Colombian memory.
Las Formas de la Pereza y Otros Ensayos (2007; t. The Forms of Laziness and Other Essays) is a book about the origin and manifestations of laziness. The author’s hypothesis is that laziness would not be a luxury but the original condition of human existence, and the starting point of all subsequent human creations.
An extensive bibliography about his writings has been prepared by Professor Augusto Escobar Mesa from the University of Antioquia, and the Université de Montréal.
Columnist[edit]
Abad started to write in Newspapers and Magazines since he was in school and later when he was in college. After college, he wrote in newspapers such as El Espectador and continued for more than 15 years. In Abad’s writings, one can see his incisive character when writing about controversial subjects such as globalization, religión, corruption, etc. Jiménez confirms that one can see the reoccurring themes in Abad’s columns, which are: rhetoric, personal themes, writing jobs, literary structures, phobias, science, against globalization, Medellín and religion.[2]
In the newspaper El Espectador, Faciolince publishes a weekly column where he clearly expresses his opinion. By doing this, he allows one to see sections that talk about writing and grammar in the 21st century
Faciolince, in collaborations in literature magazines like El Malpensante, exhibits his critical view of literature, what he considers to be a good writer and a good book. One can find articles like Por qué es tan malo Paulo Coelho, where one can infer things such as:
If Coelho sells more books than all of the other Brazilian writers combined, then that means his books are foolish and elementary. If they were profound books, literarily complex, with serious ideas and well elaborated, the public would not buy them because the masses tend to be uneducated and have very bad taste.[3]
Abad does not try to be a best-seller but creates complete characters like Gaspar Medina in the novel Asuntos de un hidalgo disoluto, where one can see Medina's periodization of being a hidalgo and dissolute.[4] Or, likewise, explain relevant themes like in his novel Angosta where it "takes elements of actual Colombian reality like poverty, subjects of economics and politics, subversive groups, etc. later for parody and exaggeration in the near future."[5]
Reception[edit]
1980. Colombian National Short Story Prize for Piedras de Silencio
1996. National Creative Writing Scholarship; Colombian Ministry of Culture for Fragmentos de Amor Furtivo.
1998. Simón Bolívar National Prize in Journalism.
2000. 1st Casa de America Award for Innovative American Narrative for Basura.
2004. Best Spanish Language Book of the Year (People’s Republic of China) for Angosta.
2006. German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellowship.
2007. National Book Award; Libros & Letras Latin American and Colombian Cultural Magazine for El Olvido que Seremos.
2007. Simón Bolívar National Prize in Journalism.
2010. Casa de America Latina, Lisboa [6]
2012. WOLA-Duke University Human Rights Book Award
Published works[edit]
Malos Pensamientos (1991)
Asuntos de un Hidalgo Disoluto (1994; Eng. The Joy of Being Awake, 1996)
Tratado de Culinaria para Mujeres Tristes (1996; t: Cookbook for Sad Women)
Fragmentos de Amor Furtivo (1998; t: Fragments of Furtive Love)
Basura (2000; t: Garbage)
Palabras Sueltas (2002; t: Loose Words)
Oriente Empieza en El Cairo (2002)
Angosta (2004)
El Olvido que Seremos (2006; The Oblivion We Shall Be)(Published in the United States as Oblivion, 2012)
Las Formas de la Pereza y Otros Ensayos (2007; t: The Forms of Laziness and Other Essays)
El Amanecer de un Marido (2008; t: The Awakening of a Husband)
Traiciones de la Memoria (2009; t: Treasons of Memory)
Testamento involuntario (2011, poetry)
La Oculta (2014, novel)
Héctor Abad: 'I no longer feel like a victim'
Author Héctor Abad Faciolince's story is enmeshed with the conflict in Colombia: his brother-in-law was abducted, his father murdered. But Abad does not see himself as a victim, as he explains in an interview with DW.
DW: Contemporary Colombian literature deals with violence, murder and fear, even though Colombia is one of the most beautiful countries on earth. Why is this writing so severe?
Héctor Abad: Our imagination comes from our experiences and memories. I do not like writing about violence. I reject it, and I myself am not violent. But if this violence is knocking at your door with all its might, and stains you with blood and even kills your own, then it feels wrong and less authentic not to write about it.
In your books you also describe how your own history is enmeshed in the armed conflict. The guerrillas, paramilitaries and government have been fighting for more than 50 years. How did the civil war affect you directly?
My family has a very close connection with rural Colombia, which is where the conflict took place. My brother-in-law was kidnapped twice by the guerrillas. He owns 120 cows and produces milk. The first kidnapping lasted briefly, but the second time he was in captivity for several months. Afterwards, he had to regularly pay protection money to continue his business. An ex-girlfriend of mine was seriously injured in a car bombing by the drug baron, Pablo Escobar. Many people died. My friend has small scars over her face and her whole body from the glass shards that flew through the area in the explosion.
And then there's your father, a very well-known medical professor who was committed to the struggle against violence and for human rights. He was shot on the street by right-wing paramilitary forces in 1987.
My father was a very kind and generous man. For me, his death is certainly the most painful sacrifice. Columbia's armed conflict may not compare to the atrocities of the European wars of the twentieth century, however the extent of the violence is massive. My family caught it from both sides, from the extreme left and the extreme right. My father was always convinced that a peace treaty would be the best way to reduce the violence in the country. I myself was in exile for many years. Now I am back and can see a serious effort to realize the dreams my father had 30 years ago.
Héctor Abad (right) with author Mario Vargas Llosa at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, Mexico
Colombia is a very diverse country. Many intellectuals there argue that Colombia is not ready for peace because of its heterogeneity. What do you think of that assessment?
Germany has succeeded in integrating an entire country, the GDR. So why shouldn't we achieve this? Here in Colombia some places feel like the USA, others like Asia, Africa or even an Arab country. We have valleys that remind you of Switzerland. There are even Holstein horses. We have Andean, African and European music. Our country is large and eclectic. But to say that these many Colombians cannot grow together, I think that is incorrect. How should we know that we are not ready for peace if we don't try it? The dream of humankind is that we can live together, despite our differences. Therein lies the success of human history.
On October 2, 2016, a referendum to confirm a peace treaty between the government and the FARC guerrilla group was rejected by the Colombian people. A revised agreement is now in place however. Do you believe that reconciliation in the country can be successful?
Just as I was formerly for peace with the paramilitaries - in 2006, nearly 30,000 paramilitary fighters demobilized -, I am also now for the new peace treaty. It is Colombia's chance to devote itself to more urgent problems, rather than a useless and absurd war that no one can win. But reconciliation is very difficult in today's world, where ideas of hate prevail. And not just in Colombia. These ideas are also asserted in Europe, for example in France. Then there was the Brexit, the success of Donald Trump. Currently, confrontation is popular. The zeitgeist makes it possible to call oneself anti-establishment and to be violent, racist, anti-feminist and anti-gay.
Despite your own history, you don't describe yourself as a victim of the conflict in Colombia. Why?
Of course I will always live with these experiences and losses. But the constant resentment, seeing yourself always as a victim, can destroy you inside. I was fortunate enough to be able to write a book about the life and the murder of my father. This was very beneficial for me; it allowed me to no longer feel like a victim. I was able to articulate my own truth, and it has been read by many people.
The Colombian author and publisher Héctor Abad Faciolince is best-known in Germany by his first surname. He was born in Medellín in 1958. After his father was murdered in 1987, Abad went into exile in Spain and Italy for five years. Abad has often been described as the new Gabriel García Márquez, the Nobel prize-winning Colombian author. His breakthrough came with the 2006 memoir "El olvido que seremos" (Oblivion: A Memoir), which describes the death of his father at the hands of Colombian paramilitaries. Abad is also well known for his political essays and columns, while his most recent novel, "La Oculta" (The Farm, 2014), has become a bestseller.
Interview: Nicolas Martin
Members of the Secretary-General’s Network of Men Leaders
Hector Abad Faciolince
Héctor Abad Faciolince is a Colombian novelist, essayist, journalist, and editor. He grew up in Medellín, where he studied medicine, philosophy and journalism. After his father’s murder in 1987, he was forced into exile, living and teaching in Italy until 1992, when he again returned to Colombia.
Mr. Abad is considered one of the most talented "post-boom" writers in Latin American literature. He is best known for his bestseller "Oblivion: A Memoir". His other works include Angosta, Recipes for Sad Women, and The forms of Laziness and Other Essays.
As a journalist, Mr. Abad has published articles in The New York Times, Newsweek, and El País, and has a column in the Colombian Sunday Edition of El Espectador. He is also a two-time recipient of the Colombian Simón Bolívar National Prize in Journalism, and the first Casa de América Award for Innovative American Narrative for Basura (2000). He recently received the WOLA-Duke University Human Rights Book Award.
Héctor Abad Faciolince
Colombia
© Daniela Abad
Héctor Abad Faciolince was born in Medellín, Colombia, in 1958, where he studied medicine, philosophy and journalism. After being expelled from university for writing a defamatory text against the Pope, he moved to Italy. In 1987, shortly after returning to his homeland, his father was murdered. In 2008, Abad was a guest of the DAAD's Artist-in-Residence Programme in Berlin. He now lives again in Colombia. El olvido que seremos sold over 250,000 copies in Spanish. His latest novel La Oculta has been number 1 among the bestselling novels in Colombia since November 2014 and has already sold 70,000 copies.
In his new novel La Oculta (“The Farm”), Héctor Abad presents us with the moving story of a closely-knit Colombian family.
When the Ángel family’s beloved home in the Antioquian wilderness falls into danger, they manage to defend it against the guerrillas and, later, the paramilitaries – but at a high price. When their parents die, Pilar, Eva and Toño have to decide the fate of their father’s legacy. While Pilar and Toño want to keep La Oculta, Eva, who experienced something terrible at the old farm house, is determined to sell. As the siblings each struggle with their own problems, their inner conflicts threaten to tear apart not only their home but also their family.
Written from alternating points of view in precise and atmospheric language, the Ángel family will win the reader’s heart immediately. Like his bestselling novel El olvido que seremos, La Oculta is part autobiographic, part fiction. It was number 1 among the bestselling novels in Colombia in 2014.
In Latin America, a new post-ideological realism is spreading. Héctor Abad's novel La Oculta is today's world literary response to Gabriel García Márquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude".
A masterpiece.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Abad depicts in La Oculta much more than a story about settlers: sad and sensitive, it is an elegy to the fragile paradises that we must all leave behind.
Le Monde
La Oculta will leave no one indifferent. I read it in two days and just couldn’t put it down.
Florence Thomas, El Tiempo
A book in the finest Colombian storytelling tradition.
Mercurio
A novel that moves the reader and draws him in.
Semana
A book that can be read as a metaphor for his country.
El País
No one knows the recipe for happiness – and still Héctor Abad has given us a whole book of them. In Tratado de culinaria para mujeres tristes ("A Culinary Manual for Sad Women"), he shows us how to prevail against almost any misfortune, be it old age or melancholy, and enchants the reader with anecdotes that seem to come straight out of a witch's cauldron.
The laconic wisdom of life that shines through Abad’s capricious recommendations is ambrosia for the soul, even for men.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Instructions for happiness – this author knows the female psyche well.
El País
A mixture of memoir and novel, El olvido que seremos ("Oblivion") is an attempt to save a destiny from the oblivion of forgetting – whilst at the same time providing an involving portrait of an epoch, and of a young man on the way to adulthood. The clear and poetic language makes reading this book into a true literary experience. “Oblivion” has sold over 180,000 copies in Spanish and was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the USA.
As an account of the love between a son and his father it is most moving. But it is also a clear-sighted exploration of the terrible sickness that afflicted Colombia in the 1980s, some pages so painful that one flinches from reading them. In all, it is a tragic and unforgettable history.
John Coetzee
My most enthralling reading experience of recent years.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Not only is it a beautiful and profoundly moving work, not only is it a necessary lesson on current themes such as civic education and the relation between personal and historical memory, but also an irreplaceable testimony of the struggle for democracy and tolerance in countries that are so near and dear to us.
Fernando Savater, El País
A tremendous and necessary book, with an overwhelming courage and honesty. At times I wondered how he had the bravery to write it.
Javier Cercas
A beautiful, authentic and moving book.
Rosa Montero
I store up what I have read by Héctor Abad like spherical, polished, luminous little balls of bread, ready for when I have to walk through a vast forest in the nighttime.
Manuel Rivas
The city of Angosta is divided into three parts, according to social standing. When the aspiring poet Andrés starts working for an organization that aims to expose the crimes of the upper class and the drug lords, he himself soon becomes a victim. Left behind are Jacobo Lince, the charismatic owner of an eccentric bookshop, and Candela, Andrés’s girlfriend. Together, they take up where he left off. Written in poetic language, the futuristic Angosta is a mirror of the violent reality of many parts of Latin America, and both a beautiful and terrifying modern fable.
“Truth and memory are always tinged with oblivion, or distortions of memory that are not recognized as such.” In this book, Héctor Abad discusses the difficulty of recomposing the past, summed up – as the title of the book indicates – as Traiciones de la memoria (“Betrayals of Memory”). The trigger for this journey into the past is a poem found in the bag of the author’s father, Héctor Abad Gómez, on the day of his assassination in Medellín, August 1987. The author wrote in his diary at that moment: “We found him in a pool of blood. I kissed him and he was still warm. But so still, so still. The rage almost choked my tears. The sadness wouldn’t allow me to feel the full extent of the rage. My mum took off his wedding ring. I looked in his bag and found a poem”. The poem, attributed by some to Jorge Luis Borges, becomes the protagonist of the book. In 2006, when Abad published El olvido que seremos, some literary critics reproached him for having claimed Borges as the poem’s author in order to sell more books. In confronting this controversy, Abad began to investigate the origins of the poem. The task was not to be an easy one, owing to the fact that certain Borges specialists insisted the poem was not by the great Argentine writer. Through interviews and meetings with writers and journalists, the author ends up winning the battle over oblivion and betrayals of memory. In addition, the book contains two short chapters in which the author speaks of his experience as an emigrant in Turín, Italy, during his years in exile after his father’s assassination. He also reflects on the complex theme of the self and the other in literature.
For further information, please visit also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Abad_Faciolince
Rights:
Novels:
La Oculta, Bogotá: Alfaguara 2014, 340 p.; Madrid: Alfaguara 2015
Number 1 among the beststelling novels in Colombia for 6 months and the 5th bestselling novel in 2015
Nominated for the Mario Vargos Llosa Prize 2016
Cálamo Prize 2015 – book of the Year in Spain
Brazil: Companhia das Letras ● Denmark: Aurora Boreal ● France: Gallimard 2016 ● Germany: Berenberg 2016, btb pb forthcoming April 2018 ● Greece: Patakis ● Netherlands: De Geus 2016 ● Portugal: Quetzal 2016 ● UK: World Editions ● US: Archipelago 2018
El olvido que seremos, Bogotá: Planeta 2006; Barcelona: Planeta 2007, 274 p.
Over 250,000 copies sold in Spanish language
Brazil: Companhia das Letras 2011 ● Egypt: Al Arabi 2014 ● France: Gallimard 2010, pb 2012 ● Germany: Berenberg Verlag 2009 ● Greece: Patakis 2017 ● Italy: Einaudi 2009 ● Netherlands: De Geus 2010 ● Portugal: Quetzal 2009 ● Romania: Curtea Veche 2014 ● UK: Old Street Publishing 2010, World Editions ● US: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2012, pb 2013
Angosta, Bogotá: Seix Barral 2004, 320 p.
Film rights sold to Dos Monkeys
Brazil: Companhia das Letras 2015 ● France: Editions JC Lattès 2010
Basura, Madrid: Lengua de trapo 2000, 190 p.
Italy: Bollati Boringhieri 2008 ● Portugal: Quetzal 2012
Fragmentos de amor furtivo, Bogotá: Alfaguara 1998, 357 p.
Film rights sold to One Film Corp.
Portugal: Presença 2001
Tratado de culinaria para mujeres tristes, Medellín: Celacanto 1996; Alfaguara 1997, 2011 120 p.
Brazil: Companhia das Letras 2012 ● France: Editions JC Lattès 2010 ● Germany: Wagenbach 2001, 2017 ● Greece: Enalios 2000 ● Italy: Sellerio 1997, 2010 ● Portugal: Presença 2001, Quetzal 2010 ● UK: Pushkin Press 2012
Asuntos de un hidalgo disoluto, Bogotá: Ed. Tercer Mundo 1984; Alfaguara 1999, 220 p.
UK: Brookline Books 1996
Chronicles and short stories:
Traiciones de la memoria, Bogotá: Alfaguara 2009, 265 p.
France: Gallimard 2016 ● Germany: Berenberg 2011
El amanecer de un marido, Bogotá: Seix Barral 2008, 225 p.
Oriente empieza en El Cairo, Barcelona: Mondadori 2002, 203 p.
Egypt: Sefsafa
Palabras sueltas, Bogotá: Planeta 2002, 250 p.
Malos pensamientos, Medellín: Ed. Universidad de Antioquia 1991, 101 p.
Poetry:
Testamento involuntario, Bogotá: Alfaguara 2012, 130 p.
Spain: Pre-Textos 2015
Héctor Abad Faciolince (born 1958) is a Colombian novelist, essayist, journalist, and editor. Abad is considered one of the most talented "post-boom" writers in Latin American literature. Abad is best known for his bestselling novels Angosta, and more recently, El Olvido que Seremos (t. Oblivion: A Memoir).
Colombian Contemporary Literature Celebrated In Moroccan University – OpEd
February 26, 2018 Dr. Mohamed Chtatou 0 Comments
By Dr. Mohamed Chtatou
It is not every day that one touches ground with the rich and gratifying Latin American literature and writers, this time around luck struck, the Embassy of Colombia and the dynamic International University of Rabat -UIR- “conspired” benevolently to bring to Morocco the world-known Colombian writer Hector Abad Faciolince, to talk to students and faculty about his work translated in several world languages. This highly-interesting literary function was aptly organized by the super active and competent Professor Mustapha Bencheikh, dean of the School of Languages and Civilizations and his able staff: Sara Salmi, Habiba Zaghloul and Mouna Kandil.
Hector Abad Faciolince, the self-made writer
Hector Abad Faciolince was born in Medelin, Colombia in 1958, to a well-to-do family as the only boy -among five sisters-. He started writing at the age of twelve and never stopped since. He is considered today as a prominent Latin American writer and a talented post-Latin American Boom. His books are available in major world languages: English, French, Arabic, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Romanian, etc; He has published over 14 works, the most known among them are: his bestselling novel Angosta, and more recently, El Olvido que Seremos (Oblivion: A Memoir).i His work was recognized internationally and the writer received many awards.ii
His father was a prominent doctor and philanthropist, who worked for government and international organization and traveled around the world generously helping local populations and spreading love and understanding, but he was, also, a, university professor, and human rights activist and prominent leader whose holistic vision of healthcare led him to found the Colombian National School of Public Health which allowed many Colombians rich or poor to pursue their studies easily in this specialty to serve Colombians wherever they are.
Hector Abad Faciolince started his presentation talking about his family but mainly his father, who seemingly is his own hero: my father, my idol. At an early age Hector wrote a letter to his globe-trotting father while away in one of his missions. The latter was pleasantly surprised by his son’s mastership of the words and predicted that he would become a writer and thus he became a world know writer: novelist, journalist and essayist, read in many world languages with much delight and gusto.
Hector Abad Faciolince, the magnificent story teller
The writer with the Rabat International University audience
Hector Abad Faciolince is truly a story teller and a good one, indeed. During his presentation he captivated the public with his personal stories. His secret: the choice of words, the nature of the characters, the tone of voice and the freshness of the narration styles. From the word go the public was receptive of his talk because the man is full of goodness and love and that made everyone feel comfortable and predisposed to be enchanted by his wonderful stories and captivated by their boundless magic.
His father Hector Abad Gomez was some sort Robin Hood or Ali Baba, almost taking from the rich and giving to the needy, especially the community of students who were poor but willing to pursue their education. In a word, his father’s generosity gave hope to the poor and his boundless humanity created so much-needed social cohesion.
My father, my hero
The father not only cared for Colombians welfare but went around the world spreading love and medical care and expertise to the poor. It seems that Colombia was not big enough for this philanthropist and medical doctor goodness to spread his love and affection to the needy. He, indeed, needed a bigger stage and he got it: a big heart for a bigger environment and the world at large benefited greatly from the generosity of this man.
Flag of Colombia.
The father’s heart wavered between Catholicism and secularism; he was, actually, both, in a very positive manner. But alas, our good hero was the victim of the very thing he abhorred extremism and violence. Like all good heroes, he fell prey to the violence of the extremists for the only reason that he was a good man full of love. He was murdered by the paramilitaries in a crime that brought about shock in Colombia and other parts of the world. The writer was threatened, himself, and, as a result, he moved to Europe where he stayed for 5 years, first in Spain and later in Italy.
Hector Abad Faciolince and Mohamed Chtatou
We learn from Hector Abad Faciolince that this dramatic event took place in a country torn by political extremism and drug cartel violence and that people die of gun violence as easily as they breath. Guns are easily available in the country and so is cheap violence.
The public moved by the violent death of Hector Abad Faciolince’s father and they were prepared to shed a tear or two, but the author does not want a sad ending to his story and moved on to talk about hope, dialogue and forgiveness in Colombia and, thus, brought about a happy ending to the tale.
His father was very much like Saint Martin of Tours (Latin: Sanctus Martinus Turonensis; 316 or 336 – 8 November 397), who was born in what is now Szombathely, Hungary, spent much of his childhood in Pavia, Italy, and lived most of his adult life in France, he is considered a spiritual bridge across Europe. He is best known for the account of his using his military sword to cut his cloak in two, to give half to a beggar clad only in rags in the depth of winter. Conscripted as a soldier into the Roman army, he found the duty incompatible with the Christian faith he had adopted and became an early conscientious objector.
Final word
Location of Colombia. Source: CIA World Factbook.
Hector Abad Faciolince successfully captivated, for an afternoon, the audience of the International University of Rabat -UIR- in a wonderful literary intimacy transporting everyone through the air to Colombia, which was known to them only for its wonderful coffee and dreadful drug cartels epitomized in a recent American action film entitled “Colombiana. ”
His talk was a wonderful collective therapy extolling such universal concepts as love, affection and infatuation but also pain, death and loneliness. Everyone left the auditorium feeling light and refreshed and willing to give hugs to everyone else because this wonderful Latin American writer spread around, in words, so much love and forgiveness to go around.
Colombia, mon amour.
You can follow Professor Mohamedd Chtatou onTwitter: @Ayurinu
Notes:
i.
Malos Pensamientos (1991)
Asuntos de un Hidalgo Disoluto (1994; Eng. The Joy of Being Awake, 1996)
Tratado de Culinaria para Mujeres Tristes (1996; t: Cookbook for Sad Women)
Fragmentos de Amor Furtivo (1998; t: Fragments of Furtive Love)
Basura (2000; t: Garbage)
Palabras Sueltas (2002; t: Loose Words)
Oriente Empieza en El Cairo (2002)
Angosta (2004)
El Olvido que Seremos (2006; The Oblivion We Shall Be)(Published in the United States as Oblivion, 2012)
Las Formas de la Pereza y Otros Ensayos (2007; t: The Forms of Laziness and Other Essays)
El Amanecer de un Marido (2008; t: The Awakening of a Husband)
Traiciones de la Memoria (2009; t: Treasons of Memory)
Testamento involuntario (2011, poetry)
La Oculta (2014, novel)
Translated works
English:
1996. The Joy of Being Awake (Asuntos de un Hidalgo Disoluto), pub. by Brookline Books in the US
2010. Oblivion: A Memoir (El olvido que seremos), pub. by Old Street Publishing in the UK, and in 2012 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US (2012)
2012. Recipes for Sad Women (Tratado de Culinaria para Mujeres Tristes), pub. by Pushkin Press in the UK
Italian:
1997. Trattato di Culinaria per Donne Tristi (Tratado de Culinaria para Mujeres Tristes).
2008. Scarti (Basura).
2009. L’oblio che saremo (El Olvido que Seremos).
German:
2001. Kulinarisches Traktat für traurige Frauen (Tratado de Culinaria para Mujeres Tristes).
2009. Brief an einen Schatten: Eine Geschichte aus Kolumbien (El olvido que seremos).
2011. Das Gedicht in der Tasche.
2016. La Oculta.
Greek:
2000. Συvtα¡έs ¡ια απо¡оntευ έs ¡υvαίkεs (Tratado de Culinaria para Mujeres Tristes)
Portuguese:
2001. Receitas de Amor para Mulheres Tristes (Tratado de Culinaria para Mujeres Tristes).
2001. Fragmentos de Amor Furtivo (Fragmentos de Amor Furtivo).
2009. Somos o Esquecimento que Seremos (El Olvido que Seremos).
2011. A Ausência que seremos (Companhia das Letras)
2012. Livro de receitas para mulheres tristes
2012. Os Dias de Davanzati (Basura).
Chinese:
2005. 深谷幽城 (Angosta) The four Chinese characters mean, respectively: deep, valley, faint or dim, and castle, so an attempt to a translation would be “The deep valley and the dim castle”. Héctor Abad Faciolince’s name is rendered in Chinese as 埃克托尔·阿瓦德·法西奥林塞.
Dutch:
2010. Het vergeten dat ons wacht (El Olvido que Seremos).
French:
2010. L’oubli que nous serons (Gallimard)
2010. Angosta (Lattès)
2010. Traité culinaire à l’usage des femmes tristes (Lattès)
Arabic:
2014 النسيان (El Olvido que seremos)
Romanian:
2014. Suntem deja uitarea ce vom fi (Curtea Veche)
ii. 1980. Colombian National Short Story Prize for Piedras de Silencio
1996. National Creative Writing Scholarship; Colombian Ministry of Culture for Fragmentos de Amor Furtivo.
1998. Simón Bolívar National Prize in Journalism.
2000. 1st Casa de America Award for Innovative American Narrative for Basura.
2004. Best Spanish Language Book of the Year (People’s Republic of China) for Angosta.
2006. German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellowship.
2007. National Book Award; Libros & Letras Latin American and Colombian Cultural Magazine for El Olvido que Seremos.
2007. Simón Bolívar National Prize in Journalism.
2010. Casa de America Latina, Lisboa [5]
2012. WOLA-Duke University Human Rights Book Award
A DEATH FORETOLD
Dennis M. Leder
America. 207.10 (Oct. 15, 2012): p34+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 America Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.
http://americamagazine.org/
Full Text:
OBLIVION
A Memoir
By Hector Abad
Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 272p $26
Our parents occupy our lives "in a place that precedes thought." Something subjective and tribal joins us while we live and allows for objectivity only after a parent's death.
As children we hope for lasting happiness, but a premonition of our parents' mortality teaches us that joy is always precariously balanced. When the external forces of violence, ideological struggles and dangerous governments define a society's structures, happiness becomes all the more ephemeral and death an "impalpable ghostly presence."
Love and death in an era of political turmoil are the motives behind Hector Abad's memoir, Oblivion. The title comes from a sonnet by the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges: "Already we are the oblivion we shall be ..." The author notes the irony that this favorite poem of his father's was found in his pocket the day Colombian mercenaries shot and killed him on a street in Medellin. Also in the pocket was the death list on which his father's name appeared.
Hector Abad Gomez, doctor, loving parent, humanist and "ideological hybrid," was 67 years old when he was murdered. During the last years of his life (1982-87), he chaired a committee for the defense of human rights and wrote endlessly to government officials, generals in the military, even death squad leaders, condemning torture and murder, listing full names and concrete cases. His was a death foretold in Colombia during those volatile decades, as he launched a crusade against the plague of political violence.
As a doctor, this jovial parent was more an academic than a clinician. His defense of human rights and commitment to preventive medicine caused conflict with colleagues, who saw little value in a doctor's passion for clean water and latrines. Even though he opened the department of preventive medicine at the University of Antioquia in Medellin and founded the National School of Public Health, his sense of social justice and rejection of ideological extremes confounded and angered adherents on both sides of the political spectrum.
An activist and esteemed university professor might be shielded by his public profile, but political hatred has no scruple when it comes to exterminating intelligence. The bald, friendly "madman" with a resounding voice that delivered his public denunciations was a disturbance to the state and its cohorts. His death sentence for condemning barbarity was almost assured, even if postponed for a time.
While it is not surprising that death is a prevalent theme in Hector Abad's memoir, love provides an equally strong counterbalance. His father's presence in family life generated trust, tolerance and a spirit of happiness. Both mother and father inherited a somewhat "dark Catholicism" mixed with confidence in human reason. His mother maintained a proportion of the mystic, while his father's humanism emphasized reason more than faith. But the father could be brought to tears by poetry, and his mother's gift for business not only kept the economy of the family stable, but also added a touch of materialism to her devotion. In short, contradictory beliefs somehow contributed to domestic harmony.
Abad recounts the details of life in a household of 10 women, recalling with affection the attention given him by his father, while brilliant and witty older sisters dominated his home life. His father's acceptance and encouragement were total; he believed that the best form of education was happiness, but not baseless happiness. Lessons learned by the son about racial prejudice, personal cowardice and superficial values were the fruits of his father's principles.
The family history divided in two when Hector's nearest older sister, "the star of the family," died of melanoma at the age of 16. The effect on his father was a boundless sadness, which subtly made the idea of death for a just cause more attractive. From that point onward, his father's sense of social justice became stronger, with a proportionate lack of attention to precaution and personal security.
The account of his death and the subsequent silence about the case, without arrests or suspects, is a well-known Latin American pattern. Hector Abad was 28 years old at the time, and his only recourse was to keep his father's bloodstained shirt as a concrete memory and "a promise to avenge his death."
Abad's father confided in "the evocative power of words" to denounce injustice. Twenty years after his death, his son assumed the father's wisdom, unfathomed by those who killed him, "to use words to express the truth, a truth that will last longer than their lie."
The writing of a memoir can allow a son to objectify the events, personality and influence of a deceased father. It can also serve to rescue a loved parent, at least for a time, from oblivion. Upon completion of his book, Hector Abad had fulfilled a personal project and had come to the conclusion that "the only possibility to forget and to forgive consisted in telling what happened and nothing more."
DENNIS M. LEDER, S.J., director of I. C.E./CEFAS, the Central American Institute for Spirituality, writes from Guatemala.
Leder, Dennis M.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Leder, Dennis M. "A DEATH FORETOLD." America, 15 Oct. 2012, p. 34+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A306527681/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e4181d08. Accessed 23 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A306527681
Abad, Hector: OBLIVION
Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 1, 2012):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Abad, Hector OBLIVION Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Adult Nonfiction) $26.00 5, 1 ISBN: 978-0-374-22397-7
A Colombian writer delivers a rousing, affecting tribute to his father, H�ctor Abad G�mez, a professor and physician who was murdered in 1987 by radical political opponents. G�mez--who, according to the author, had limited skill with his hands and once inadvertently hastened the death of a surgical patient--moved from private practice to become a passionate advocate for public health, in Colombia and elsewhere, and a fiery writer of books, essays and op-ed pieces opposing violence and promoting personal freedom and equality--ideas sure to get you killed in many places. The son adored the father and writes about what in many was an ideal, if not idyllic, childhood. G�mez was extraordinarily affectionate and latitudinarian in just about everything. He continually encouraged his son, profoundly patient with him and loved him with a patent preference that in some ways, as the author recognizes, was unfair to the author's sisters. Abad remembers the conflicts in his family, notably the deeply pious Roman Catholic women who struggled mightily against the father's more liberal religious views. He also remembers with lingering horror the death of his own talented sister to cancer. The author creates enormous dramatic irony in his text: We know from the beginning that his father will be murdered, so Abad imbues every moment with an aching pathos. The translators have preserved his facile and sophisticated uses of the language. One 205-word sentence, for example, unspools with absolute clarity. Sometimes the detail is grim and wrenching--a sewer pipe clogged with tapeworms, his poor dying sister's physical decline, his father's bullet-riddled corpse. One small reservation: a tendency--somewhat understandable--to quote excessively from his father's publications. Is there a father alive who would not weep at such an artful, tender tribute?
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Abad, Hector: OBLIVION." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2012. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A281470298/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9d19b830. Accessed 23 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A281470298
Hector Abad Faciolince. Oblivion: A Memoir
Adele Newson-Horst
World Literature Today. 86.4 (July-August 2012): p74+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 University of Oklahoma
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
Full Text:
Héctor Abad Faciolince. Oblivion: A Memoir. Anne McLean & Rosalind Harvey, tr. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2012. ISBN 9780374223977
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
First published in 2006 as El Olvido que seremos and reminiscent of Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America , this work demonstrates the complexities of contemporary Colombian society as much as it does the burning desire to rescue the public works of the author's beloved father, Héctor Abad Gómez--physician, professor, public-health specialist, and former president of the Antioquia Human Rights Defense Committee. The two are, after all, connected. In this work, his father (depicted as an Atticus Finch and a Don Quixote, alternately) fights against a society that is rife with social inequities and violence.
The memoir chronicles the life of a medical doctor, scholar, and social activist often at odds with the ruling class and the Catholic church of Colombia, especially during the turbulent decade of the 1980s and in opposition to all forms of oppression. The narrator--first as a young boy, next as an adolescent, then as a man--who recounts the life of the astounding activist does so with an honesty and clear-sightedness that eschews sentimentality. The memoir begins with "In the house lived ten women, one boy, and a man" and ends with "And if my memories enter into harmony with some of yours ... the oblivion that awaits can be deferred a moment more."
Abad's father was murdered on August 25, 1987 (before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the Taliban were allies of the United States against the Russians, and when the crème de la crème of Colombian society wished to preserve its power and wealth in the face of a huge gulf between the poor and the wealthy), and this singular act serves as the focus of the memoir, which illuminates as much about the author and his society as it does about the father. Yet to make more poignant the circumstances, the final page of the work features a photo of family members surrounding the body of the fallen hero on a Medellín street.
The author admits that he kept his father's bloodied shirt until he was able to write this work because he "understood that the only revenge, the only memento, and also the only possibility to forget and to forgive consisted in telling what happened, and nothing more." It was some twenty years before Abad was able to write this memoir. The key to the memoir's triumph is Abad's deft handling of memory. The paramilitary's violence succeeds and soccer continues to serve as "the opiate of the people," the work suggests, because memory or the act of remembering does not occupy a higher plane than it currently does. That is why the right wing held society hostage in the 1960s (when the author was a child) and repeated its exercise in the 1980s without massive resistance. The work's title, Oblivion , is best captured by Mejía Vallejo's speech at the father's funeral: "We live in a county that forgets its best faces, its best impulses, and so life will go on...."
Adele Newson-Horst
Morgan State University
Newson-Horst, Adele
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Newson-Horst, Adele. "Hector Abad Faciolince. Oblivion: A Memoir." World Literature Today, vol. 86, no. 4, 2012, p. 74+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A294903682/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1b9d09dd. Accessed 23 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A294903682
Honoring a Father's Memory With Words Carved More Deeply Than an Epitaph
Dwight Garner
The New York Times. (Apr. 24, 2012): Arts and Entertainment: pC7(L).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
Full Text:
OBLIVION
A Memoir
By Hector Abad
Translated by Anne McLean and Rosalind Harvey
263 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.
If I were forced to describe Hector Abad's memoir, ''Oblivion,'' in a single word, that word would probably be: meh. His book is, to quote an offhandedly poisonous Paul Simon song lyric from the 1980s, ''all right in a sort of limited way for an off night.''
That's how I felt, anyway, 50 or 60 pages into ''Oblivion.'' I nearly put it down. But you can detect a subterranean thumping early in this book -- the way that, beneath some pop songs that initially sound as dead as chamber music, there's a faint promise of liberating noise just around the bend, if you're patient enough to hold on.
''Oblivion'' does deepen and expand. And, in its second half, it emits a primal yet articulate howl. The author finds himself quite buried beneath an avalanche of tragedy and loss, and buried too beneath the senseless beauty that sometimes attends emotional disaster.
Mr. Abad, who was born in 1958, is a prolific Colombian writer and essayist. He's well known in Latin America, yet few of his books have made the leap into English. If ''Oblivion'' is any indication of his talent, that situation is probably going to change.
This book is a memorial to the author's father, Hector Abad Gomez, a prominent doctor, writer and human-rights campaigner. He was gunned down and killed in the streets of Medellin in 1987, by motorcycle-riding thugs, almost certainly for his criticism of the repressive Colombian regime.
''Oblivion'' provides a complex assessment of the author's father's vibrant public life, but it's his private life that Mr. Abad is most keen on evoking. His father believed that children should be indulged, loved without reservation and buried in what the author calls ''vast hugs'' and ''excessive kisses.'' He was what ''people in Medellin call un alcahueta, a pushover,'' Mr. Abad writes.
He was not wealthy, yet he left his wallet open to his children. If they wished to stay home from school for a day, that was fine. He never hit them; he never forced them to eat anything they did not want to eat.
''The best form of education is happiness,'' he liked to say. This method of child rearing worked for him. He and his wife had five daughters and one son, and they grew to be -- perhaps against certain odds -- happy, cultured, beautiful people.
It's possible that no father in literary history has so stood on the right side of this dictum from Calvin Trillin: ''Your children are either the center of your life or not, and the rest is commentary.''
There's a certain amount of candied stickiness -- of hagiography -- in the early chapters of ''Oblivion.'' There is perhaps one vast hug too many.
Mr. Abad doesn't stop to consider that his father's smothering love may have been his way of compensating for being gone so often for his work.
Mr. Abad's prose, in this translation by Anne McLean and Rosalind Harvey, is elastic and alive. But once in a while he'll utter a sentence that, like a third baseman's wild throw to first, sails into the stands and beans a civilian. One such line: ''Memories are like timeless seashells scattered over a beach of oblivion.''
This memoir begins to percolate, thanks to its offbeat humor. The author's father was a doctor who loathed ''blood, wounds, pus, pustules, pain, entrails, fluids, emissions and everything that is inherent to the everyday practice of medicine,'' Mr. Abad writes. Instead he was passionate about preventive medicine, about things like clean water, good sanitation and the eradication of poverty.
Driving with him was like riding shotgun with Mr. Magoo. ''Every time he had to perform the heroic act of entering a roundabout in the midst of traffic,'' Mr. Abad writes, ''he did so with his eyes shut.''
The author is amusing about the weave of his own moral fiber. In what may be my favorite sentence thus far in 2012, he writes: ''I have never felt like a good person, but I think that, thanks to my father's influence, I have sometimes managed to be a nonpracticing bad man.''
An element of neo-magical realism sneaks into ''Oblivion.'' Part of this comes from the sheer number of women who swirl around the author, often preventing him from getting a word in edgewise. (He became a writer, he suggests, so he could finally squeak out some words.) Boys came from across the region to stand outside the family's house and serenade his sisters.
Then there are moments like the time the author's father helped lead a campaign against intestinal parasites. This campaign was so successful, Mr. Abad writes, ''that all the pipes in the village were blocked with the huge number of tapeworms the villagers expelled in one day.''
Surely, you think, this is lush exaggeration. But then Mr. Abad adds: ''There is still a photo in my house of a sewage pipe blocked with a knot of tapeworms, like a clump of purplish-black spaghetti.''
I've put off, you may have noticed, talking about the awful events that choke this book's second half. The father's death is horrific enough, a coldblooded murder the author leads us toward by calmly compiling evidence of this man's brave deeds.
But there's another tragedy in this book, one I won't give away, that blindsided me. It led in some ways to the author's father's no longer caring about his own life, increasing his willingness to take political risk. It was an event that was, Mr. Abad declares, ''the dividing line between my family's past and present: the future would never be the same for any of us.''
In Spanish the verb ''to remember'' is ''recordar,'' the author reminds us, a word that derives from ''cor,'' the Latin for heart. This memoir is extravagantly big-hearted. It will be stocked, in good bookstores, in the nonfiction or belles-lettres sections. A wise owner might also place a copy under the sign that more simply reads: Parenting.
CAPTION(S):
PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIELA ABAD)
By DWIGHT GARNER
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Garner, Dwight. "Honoring a Father's Memory With Words Carved More Deeply Than an Epitaph." New York Times, 24 Apr. 2012, p. C7(L). General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A287443581/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=546a038d. Accessed 23 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A287443581
Tuesday, 22 May 2018
The Farm by Hector Abad
The Farm by Hector Abad
First published in Spanish 2014. English language translation by Anne McLean published by Archipelago in April 2018.
How I got this book:
Received a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Where to buy this book:
The Book Depository : from £10.73 (PB)
Wordery : from £14.35 (PB)
Waterstones : unavailable
Amazon : from £11.50 (used PB)
Prices and availability may have changed since this post was written
When the Angel family's beloved home in the Antioquian wilderness falls into danger, they manage to defend it against the guerrillas and, later, the paramilitaries - but at a high price. After their parents' death, Pilar, Eva and Tono have to decide the fate of their father's legacy. While Pilar and Tono want to keep La Oculta, Eva, who experienced something terrible at the old farm house, is determined to sell. As the siblings each struggle with their own problems, their inner conflicts threaten to tear apart not only their home but also their family.
The Farm is, first and foremost, a novel about the concept of home: how we identify home and how the idea of it means different things to different people. In this book three siblings, Pilar, Eva and Tono, take it in turns to narrate their stories of their family home. The farm itself, La Oculta, was hewn from pristine Colombian rock and forest some 150 years earlier by their ancestor and has experienced changing fortunes in a tumultuous country since then.
I liked how each sibling has a very distinct character and voice. Pilar is happily married to her childhood sweetheart and cannot imagine ever being without La Oculta as her home. Eva has been through a number of marriages and relationships and, for her, home is fleeting. Wherever she lives at that moment is home, but she could move elsewhere next week and live just as happily. Tono has settled down and married his artist boyfriend in New York but returns regularly to La Oculta. For him, the history of the place is what defines it and he is happier delving into La Oculta's past than in dealing with it's present problems.
The Farm feels like an epic read in that it has a large scope of characters and time periods. I enjoyed discovering the old history through Tono's chapters and the recent history from Eva's. The Colombian landscape and Antioquian people are brought vividly to life and I appreciated seeing how the relatively remote township came to exist and then to thrive. At times, particularly earlier on in the book, The Farm felt a little repetitive. I thought this more the case when the characters were establishing themselves and we were sometimes told things about them more than once, but this turned out to be good grounding for later on. This novel explores home and family in a way that I found familiar even though I think this is only the second Colombian-authored novel I have read. The experience of generation gaps and differing expectations is illustrated through Tono's and Eva's American lives while Pilar is more rooted in the mountain community traditions. This is a lovely novel to immerse oneself in and I think would make a good Book Club choice as it raises deep issues to think over and discuss.
FICTION
Author: Héctor Abad
Translator: Anne McLean
The cover for The Farm by Héctor AbadBrooklyn. Archipelago Books. 2018. 375 pages.
The eponymous farm at the heart of Héctor Abad’s new novel is tucked into a verdant corner of northwest Colombia. Known as La Oculta, it’s “a good hiding place,” says one character, “and its name itself means hidden: nobody arrives there who doesn’t know the way perfectly.” It’s been the Ángel family homestead for many years, but now, with the matriarch’s death, the farm’s future is in doubt. Should the Ángels sell or stay put? It’s a question with just two potential answers, but as debated by the three middle-aged siblings who stand to inherit the land, it’s a matter of great complexity.
The Farm is a sweeping, satisfying tale about the interplay of family life and national history. Pilar, the eldest surviving Ángel, raised her children amid the coffee plants and cattle pastures, and she doesn’t want to leave. Her sister, Eva, however, would happily part with La Oculta; she was nearly murdered there by paramilitaries who wanted the land for themselves. As for youngest sibling Antonio, he’s decamped to Manhattan, where he lives with his husband. Though still wounded by the homophobia he encountered during his teens, Antonio is nostalgic about his boyhood home. If the proposed sale is put to a vote, he’ll cast the deciding ballot.
The novel’s three main characters share the narrative duties, and each is a memorable, distinct figure. Antonio, a professional violinist, spends his spare time studying Colombian history; the chapters told in his voice provide a wealth of detail about the settlers who populated the rough terrain outside Medellín as well as the political and drug-related violence of recent decades. Eva, bookish and independent, has divorced three times, but late in the book she embarks on what might be her first truly fulfilling relationship. Pilar, meanwhile, is an unreconstructed romantic, deeply in love with her home and willing to take deceptive measures to hold onto it.
Abad explored several similar themes in Oblivion, his effusively praised memoir about a family tragedy, which was published in the US in 2012. In a sense, he’s like some of the characters in The Farm, doubling back to a piece of land that he knows extremely well. With perceptive novels like this one, Abad is carving out an enviable niche in Colombia’s celebrated literary tradition.
Kevin Canfield
New York