Oblivion
by Héctor Abad
- Percentage of approved critics who have given this book a positive review.
Critic Rating
84%
Critic Reviews: 8
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- User rating from iDreamBooks & iTunes
Reader Rating
100%
Reader Ratings: 7
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Synopsis
“A beautiful and profoundly moving work . . . An irreplaceable testimony of the struggle for democracy and tolerance in Latin America.” —El PaísOblivion 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.
About Héctor Abad
Published: April 24, 2012 by Macmillan Publishing
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs. Non-fiction. 272 pages
- All Critics: 8
- Positive: 7
- Negative: 1
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Kirkus Reviews | 1 Mar 2012
Is there a father alive who would not weep at such an artful, tender tribute?
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The Independent | 12 Nov 2010
Its cathartic last pages, with their profound reflections on death and oblivion, are a powerful reminder of how the recalling of a person is a way of bringing back to life, and of deferring for a "moment more" the void that awaits us all.
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The Guardian | 26 Nov 2010
The result is a shattering chronicle of Colombia's violence... But it is also an inspiring tribute to tolerance and paternal love.
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World Literature Today
The key to the memoir’s triumph is Abad’s deft handling of memory.
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The New York Times | 18 May 2012
“Oblivion” is a searing memoir written with love and blood: both family blood, the kind that’s thicker than water, and the spilled blood of barbarism and murder.
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San Francisco Chronicle | 11 May 2012
This desire to explore the echoes of memory with meticulous care, to touch the wound of the past through lucid prose, is an act of valor.
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The New York Times | 23 Apr 2012
If I were forced to describe Héctor Abad’s memoir, “Oblivion,” in a single word, that word would probably be: meh.
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The New York Times | 18 May 2012
Abad waited 20 years to write this account. At one point he mentions the “twin dangers of nostalgia and despairing bitterness”...The passage of time seems to have given him just enough distance to overcome these dangers.
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