Pablo Escobar
My Father
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5.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER FROM PABLO ESCOBAR’S SON
Until now, we believed that everything had been said about the rise and fall of the most infamous drug lord of all time, Pablo Escobar – from books to film to the cult series ‘Narcos’. But these versions have always been told from the outside, only capturing half the truth, and never from the intimacy of his own home. Now, more than two decades after the full-fledged manhunt finally caught up with Escobar, his son brings us the dramatic truth as never before.
Here we find a man of contradictions – generosity and infinite love for his family; yet capable of the most extreme acts of cruelty and violence. In a deeply personal exploration of his father, we see the inner world of a man who was celebrated by some as a benevolent Robin Hood figure and by others, as a dangerous leader of the most ruthless mafia organisation in human history, reaping vengeance and death on anyone that might stand in his way.
When Escobar died, his then teenage son vowed revenge. But Escobar Jr. quickly recognised that meant following in his father's footsteps—something neither of them had ever wanted. With his change of heart, he denounced the Pablo Escobar legacy. This is far from the story of a child seeking redemption, but a shocking look at the consequences of violence and his attempt to come to terms with it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this surprisingly dispassionate account, Escobar examines the meteoric career of Pablo Escobar, a notorious Medellin cartel boss. To the world, the senior Escobar was a supervillain; to the author, he was Dad, and the son attempts to set the record straight about a man who had become myth long before his violent death. As a young criminal, Pablo Escobar stumbled into cocaine trafficking just as the demand for the white powder reached new highs in the U.S. Ruthlessness and business acumen gave him a lion's share of the growing market. He often said that if he didn't earn a million pesos by the time he was 30, he'd kill himself; in fact, by 30, he'd earned billions. For drug dealers, however, notoriety is the kiss of death; a bullet finished him on a Medellin rooftop in 1993, but not before he helped drag Colombia into chaos. His son grew up in a world of incredible privilege that included a private zoo on the family estate. Yet he also lived in isolation, his playmates a coterie of bodyguards. While focusing largely on his father, Escobar also includes the grim repercussions the cartel boss's career had on his family. The matter-of-fact prose serves the material well when one's daily life is a surreal blur of excess and danger, there's no need for embellishment. Escobar, now an architect in Argentina, certainly has an agenda, but he's not oblivious to the lives cut short by his father's death dealing. As the closing acknowledgement states: "To my father, who showed me what path not to take."
