Descripción
Libro Oblivion. A memoir. Sinopsis libro, reseña libro. Oblivion is a heartbreaking, exquisitely written memorial to the author’s father, Héctor Abad Gómez, whose criticism of the Colombian regime led to his murder by paramilitaries in 1987. Twenty years in the writing, it paints an unforgettable picture of a man who followed his conscience and paid for it with his life during one of the darkest periods in Latin America’s recent history. Libro Oblivion. A memoir.
Humberto –
My wife recommended this book as a beautiful story about childhood and paternity. She overcame her sensibility over the sad and painful and sense of the story. Nevertheless, she also told me how heartbreaking was the final stage of the book.
After its reading, I had to take a deep breath and tried to define the multiple feelings experienced during those two weekends of focused reading.
On one side, the story represents the value of families in the region of Antioquia, Colombia. An entangled mixture of male chauvinism, hard-working, liberal thoughts, strong religious beliefs, and some drops of adventure gives rise to the author’s family, a scenario for describing the second big side of this story: parenthood.
The strong links between father and son are described in a way that makes you think about yourself in those roles. Kindness, affection, and teaching are just a few characteristics of Hector Abad Gómez, becoming in this way a sort of hero in this story.
Finally, the last side, the death, the murder. I can’t remember descriptions like those. Perhaps, the end of Santiago Nassar in «Chronicle of a Death Foretold» is quite similar. Anyway, the point is just heartbreaking. You become directly affected when reading those chapters in such a personal mood that you feel the pain, the blood, the fear, and the anger inside your soul.
This is one of the best books that I’ve ever read, and for its author, I just have four words: I will not forgive.