Why a Booktrail?
1960s – 1990s: A story about a father but so evocative of a wider landscape of what is actually a very beautiful country but sadly one which is full of potential, yet tearing itself to pieces at the same time.
Oblivion
What you need to know before your trail
Medellín – Colombia’s second-largest city
Oblivion is a memorial to the author’s father, Héctor Abad Gómez, for his criticism of one of the darkest periods in Latin America’s recent history. He was a doctor and was murdered by paramilitaries in 1987.
Abad paid for his criticism with his life but this is a fitting and moving tribute to what it must have been like to be fighting for democracy and tolerance in Latin America
Travel Guide
Medellin – a city where the truth can get you killed – at least in this novel, there is a sad reality that a doctor can be killed for speaking the truth and for fighting for what is right.
In the same way that Gabriel García Márquez famously began his novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold with the words “On the day they were going to kill him…”This memoirs uses a similar effect as by revealing the details of the murder towards the end of the book gives is a unique edge,the build up having made it all the more horrific.
There are some poignant moments in this book – a love between father and son, religion, and a struggle to do what is right. A doctor in a town of more than 2 million people at the time, poor and starving children, poverty all around him, but one man who believed in more.
Where Next?
