Héctor Abad author biography, plus links to books by Héctor Abad.

Héctor Abad

Héctor Abad was born in Medellín, Colombia in 1958. At the age of twenty-one, Abad won the Colombian National Short Story Prize, and has twice won the Símon Bolívar Prize for journalism. In 1987, his father was murdered by Colombian paramilitaries, an event he reflected on 20 years later in Oblivion: A Memoir (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012), which earned widespread critical acclaim as well as the WOLA-Duke Book Award. After his father's death, Abad was forced into exile, moving first to Spain and then to Italy. He studied Modern Languages and Literature at the University of Turin. His translations from the Italian include works by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and Umberto Eco. Abad's books have been translated into more than fifteen languages, including Anne McLean's translation of The Farm, which Archipelago published in 2018.

This biography was last updated on 04/21/2026.

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