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Outlook: How books helped me bond with my captors

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Old image of Professor María Antonia Garcés reading

03/02/2022 GMT

How books helped me bond with my captors

BBC World Service - Outlook, How books helped me bond with my captors

María Antonia Garcés was a hostage in Colombia. Her love of literature helped her survive

Professor María Antonia Garcés was taken hostage by Colombian guerrillas in 1982. Through her love of literature she befriended her captors, helping her survive.

Growing up in rural Colombia, Professor María Antonia Garcés was obsessed by books and reading, and later on this passion would help her get through a really difficult chapter. In 1982 María Antonia was taken hostage by leftist guerrillas, who were looking for a ransom from her wealthy family. She was put in a tiny cell somewhere in the city of Cali for seven months, and needed a way to keep her sanity. María Antonia fell back on her love of reading, and soon books would become more than just a way to pass the time, they bonded her with her captors. The relationships she made this way, would help save her life. She spoke to Outlook's Mobeen Azhar.

Baby Halder is an internationally best-selling author and a literary superstar at home in India. But her road to stardom was a difficult one, full of interruptions and adversity. Her mother left the family when Baby was seven, she was taken out of education, and at the age of 12 she found herself pregnant and in an arranged marriage. Eventually, years later, Baby fled the marriage and became a domestic servant in Delhi, where her employer, an anthropology professor, encouraged her to begin writing, launching her on a glittering writing career. She spoke to Jo Fidgen in 2020.

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com

Presenter: Mobeen Azhar

(Photo: Professor María Antonia Garcés. Credit: Professor María Antonia Garcés)

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