Héctor Abad Faciolince has defied the coronavirus crisis and has planted himself in Madrid against the logic of panic and quarantine. These days, he published What Was Present (Diarios 1985-2006), an immersion in his private and secret life. The Colombian, author of The Forgetting We Will Be (both in Alfaguara), chooses precisely several classic books that take us from the fourteenth-century bubonic plague of Florence that reflected the Decameron of Boccaccio to which Camus narrates, whose sales have already soared .
"I like Spain so much that the idea of not coming bothered me. And it is very interesting to see it in these circumstances," he says before starting the interview. Faciolince (Medellín, 1958) recommends:
- Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio (written between 1351-1353).
- Diary of the plague year, Daniel Defoe (1722 book).
- The bride and groom, Alessandro Manzoni (published in 1842 and narrating the plague of Milan in 1630).
- The Plague, Albert Camus (1947).
- Essay on blindness, José Saramago (1995).
- Life of Henry Brulard (Stendhal's Diaries).
- Poetry by Joan Margarit.