Salvo mi corazón, todo está bien / Aside from My Heart, All Is Well

by Héctor Abad

Archipelago Books

Salvo mi corazón, todo está bien / Aside from My Heart, All Is Well

by Héctor Abad

Archipelago Books

«Tal vez no quería solamente un corazón ajeno para seguir viviendo, sino también un corazón ajeno para empezar una segunda vida».

El sacerdote Luis Córdoba está a la espera de un trasplante de corazón. Es un cura amable, alto, gordo, pero su mismo tamaño hace que no sea fácil encontrar un donante. Como los médicos le aconsejan reposo y su residencia tiene muchas escaleras, recibe hospedaje en una casa donde viven dos mujeres, una de ellas recién separada, y tres niños.

Córdoba, que es bueno y culto —crítico de cine y experto en ópera—, goza compartiendo lo que sabe con las mujeres sin esposo y los niños sin padre. Pronto se ve envuelto y fascinado por la vida familiar y, sin pretenderlo, empieza a desempeñar el papel de paterfamilias y a replantearse sus opciones de vida. Salvo mi corazón, todo está bien es la historia de un sacerdote bondadoso —inspirado en un cura real— que pone a prueba sus creencias y su optimismo inquebrantable en un mundo hostil. Su crisis existencial, en medio de personajes llenos de ganas de vivir, nos muestra una visión del matrimonio como una fortaleza sitiada: los que están dentro quieren salir, y los que están fuera quieren entrar.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

“Maybe he didn’t want someone else’s heart merely to keep living, but to have someone else’s heart to start a second life.”

Priest Luis Córdoba is waiting for a heart transplant. He is a tall, fat, kind priest, but his very size makes it difficult to find a donor. Since doctors advise rest and his residence has many stairs, he is accommodated at a house where two women, one of them recently separated, and three children live.

Córdoba is a good and knowledgeable man, film critic and opera expert, who enjoys sharing what he knows with the husbandless women and the fatherless children. Soon he becomes entangled and fascinated by family life, and unintentionally begins to act as paterfamilias and reconsider his options. Aside from My Heart, All Is Well is the story of a good-natured priest—based on a real clergyman—that puts his believes and his unbreakable optimism to the test in a hostile world. His existential crisis, surrounded by characters with a zest for life, shows us a vision of matrimony as a fortress under siege: those inside want out, and the ones outside want in.

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This book may also be available at the TIFA Festival Bookstore.

Héctor Abad is one of Colombia’s leading writers. Born in 1958, he grew up in Medellín, where he studied medicine, philosophy and journalism. In 1987, his father was murdered by Colombian paramilitaries, an event he reflected on 20 years later in Oblivion: A Memoir (2012), which received the WOLA-Duke Book Award. Abad has worked as a lecturer in Spanish at the University of Verona and as a translator of Italian literature. His translations from the Italian include works by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and Umberto Eco. Abad writes a weekly column for Colombia’s national newspaper El Espectador. The Farm won the 2015 Cálamo Prize in Spain and was shortlisted for the Mario Vargas Llosa Prize.

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