Héctor Abad Faciolince

Héctor Abad Faciolince was born in 1958 in Medellín, Colombia, 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 his return home, his father was murdered, which he dealt with almost 20 years later in his acclaimed non-fiction novel OBLIVION. In 2008, Abad was a guest in Berlin as part of the DAAD artist-in-residence program. Today he lives in Colombia again and writes a weekly column for the leading Colombian newspaper “El Espectador”.

OBLIVION sold over 250,000 copies in Spanish and was adapted for film by Spanish Oscar winner Fernando Trueba. The film won the 2021 Goya Award for Best Ibero-American Film. (Abad's latest novel, THE FARM, was the number 1 best-selling novel in Colombia for six months and has sold over 75,000 copies).