William Ospina

William Ospina was born in Herveo, Tolima, on 2 March 1954, but his family had to move around southern Colombia quite often due to the violence of the time. His father, Luis Ospina, a nurse and musician, nurtured in his son a strong passion for Colombian culture: "We had no books and home, but we had all the songs".[3]

He grew up in Cali where he studied law and political sciences at Santiago de Cali University. He quit his job and decided to devote himself to literature. He lived in Paris from 1979 to 1981. When he returned to Colombia, he became Sunday news editor for La Prensa newspaper in Bogotá (1988–1989). He has written essays about Lord Byron, Edgar Allan Poe, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, One Thousand and One Nights, Alfonso Reyes, Estanislao Zuleta, and William Shakespeare.

He has openly criticized the ineffectiveness of the Colombian government in protecting its people and caring for their necessities. He also recriminates the Colombian population for its apathy and lack of strong demands on their government.[12] He has supported the Colombian peace process and on April 9, 2013, during a national march of over a million people, the Colombian congresswoman Piedad Córdoba read a prayer named Oración por la paz written by Ospina.[13]

He proposes education as a solution for many societal problems, understanding education not only as school-related, but as the example that society and media sets for children. He states that youth must feel empowered enough to take part in their present and be able to change the future of a nation.[14]

According to Colombian newspaper El Universal, Ospina has dedicated his life to the art of thinking. His work invites people to question their history, politics, social interactions and the handling of natural resources.[15]

He has been praised by icons of Latin American literature. In 1996, Mario Vargas Llosa wrote a two-page article in the newspaper El País where he analyzes the collection of essays Es tarde para el hombre. He judges Ospina's work as bewitching and of high quality, although Vargas Llosa does not agree with his ideas; he describes the author as a skilled manufacturer of sociological fictions that transfer to a mythical past.[16] In 2005, Gabriel García Márquez defined Ospina's first novel as "the best book of the year", and Fernando Vallejo stated that the prose used in Ursúa has no competitor in the Spanish language.[17]

His work has been used by universities and academic groups to analyze political history of Colombia and other countries. In 2018, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo published an article on the divisions within the country because of Catalonia; the article proposes Ospina's idea of a united nation in which all differences are accepted as a solution to the Spanish conflict.[18]

Ospina has represented Colombia in international literary events, including Panama's book fair in 2017[19] and the Dominican Republic's book fair in 2019.[20] The magazine Arcadia included his novel El año del verano que nunca llegó among the recommended books to read in the Bogota Book Fair of 2015.[21]