Reseña

When British foreign correspondent Richard McColl purchased, on a whim, a ruined colonial building in the rural Colombian town of Mompós, he imagined a lifestyle of relaxation, with idle afternoons reading the works of Gabriel García Márquez, writing glib observations and enjoying the hypnotic momentum of a Caribbean tropical narrative, swaying in a hammock and the promise of an ice cold beer never far away. He was mistaken.

His first restoration yields a hostel, which later becomes a hotel and then spirals into further projects including the restoration of three more colonial houses, experiencing challenges that make him reconsider his upbringing, education and outlook on how he fits into his adopted homeland. With two hotels in Mompós, he experiences the joy of new friendships and a despair over the predictability of guests.

With a journalist's eye for a story, McColl navigates the history of Mompós and how its society is a microcosm of today's Colombia, with its feudal system still very much in place, inherent prejudices, stigma surrounding the politics, the people and the past, all coming to the fore.

And yet, whilst combatting fierce opposition to his in-roads into the community, facing up to ghostly tales, witchcraft and an unwelcome brush with rightwing paramilitaries, he and his Colombian wife Alba and her extended momposina family, make a successes of the businesses and grace the pages of both the international and national press.

This work of non-fiction is overall a love story for a village and its population that, in spite of the soporific temperatures, extend a welcome yet syrupy embrace to an outsider. Reading this will not reveal a tale of a fish out of water or the unoriginal and well-covered narrative of an Englishman abroad, but more an exploration of identity and belonging in Colombia's garciamarquian heartlands.

Every hotelier has tales to tell, but who more so than a writer, better versed in relating the salty minutiae of Colombia's peace process, narco-subs and the cocaine trade, sharing honest insights into life in Colombia, anecdotes of creatively planned infidelities, cowardly and corrupt politicians, curiosities and happenings that are at first peculiar and then become part of the day-to-day experience in Mompós.

This book is a prismed look at modern-day Colombia through the lens of Mompós and should be read by anyone wishing to visit the country and explore its idiosyncrasies.