Massimiliano Avesani and I went to Colombia.
Probably for different reasons.
I speak of my own: love, spirit of adventure, seduction for the new and, over time, participation. Living there for about three years, and visiting it periodically, I wrote and described the beauty of its places and people as well as the perhaps inevitable ailments from which it suffered and in part still suffers: from the bloody armed conflict to the cultivation and trafficking of drugs, to the disturbing and scandalous social injustice. I have written, spoken, seen and read a lot.
Well, although Colombia has attracted a lot of journalists and essayists as long as it has been 'fashionable', and although it has inspired reportage and best-selling books, I admit that I have found few descriptions of the context like those offered by Avesani in this novel: precise, at times meticulous, vivid and blatantly honest. A result that is by no means easy or obvious because, above all, this country and its dramas have almost always been portrayed, even by some of the so-called 'big names', with a mediocre script that clearly divides and distributes good and evil, prowess and wickedness, heroes and monsters. And if, in recent years, it is done a little less, it is only because the coca or poppy fields and the subsequent narco-trafficking activities, as well as the violence generated by them, have infected other countries, first and foremost Mexico.

The story of Efraín collected by Lorenzo and translated by Alfredo, though peculiar like all stories, is precisely the confirmation of the sometimes indissoluble mixture of good and evil. A tale that, while not absolving the ruthless transformation of this character, certainly reveals and explains it.
His stories are intertwined with important figures in recent Colombian history, such as the late communist guerrilla leader in the 1980s, Jacobo Arenas, or Pastor Alape, a commander who survived the conflict and was one of the main negotiators of the peace agreement between the FARC and the State. Their portraits as well as the dialogues with Efraín turn out to be extraordinarily credible, proving the writer's political-social sensitivity, often absent in the 'big names' mentioned above.
On the pages dedicated to the armed struggle, I can state this with conviction.
On those, on the other hand, that describe the long and troubled cycle of cocaine, from its fields to the streets of drug dealing, passing through its most violent and intricate phases, I can do nothing but learn. And for this I thank Avesani.
The vicissitudes of Alfredo, Isabel, Lorenzo and the other protagonists of the novel remain. Vicissitudes that leave a suspended breath that I do not want, nor can I now mitigate. It is up to you to read it in the hope that, as happened to me many years ago, if not love, at least interest and perhaps attraction towards that infernal earthly paradise called Colombia may be born and grow.

 

 

 

Guido Piccoli