Book Review: 'A Bell for Adano'
In 1981, shortly after my maternal grandmother died, my Mom traveled to Bogota, Colombia to help her brother and sister clear out my grandparents’ apartment and divide some heirlooms among themselves. My aunt Martha and uncle Octavio ended up taking way more than two thirds of the apartment’s contents; they lived in Bogota and had definitely more kids than Mom, so it just made logistical sense for my mother to only claim two pieces of Grandma’s antique furniture for herself, some family pictures and a ring for my older sister and a few books – in English – from my grandfather’s library for me. Though two of the books were paperback editions of tomes published before 1977 (the year of my grandfather’s death), one of them was a small and thin hardcover with no dust jacket. It looked – as many of my grandfather’s books did – well-cared for and had that indescribable but pleasant “old book” smell, and on the spine it said A Bell for Adano – John Hersey. (It ...