The extraordinary story of the richest and most violent gangster in history--from his youth, his bid for political power, his domination of the world's cocaine trade, his campaign against the Colombian state during which thousands died, his imprisonment in a luxurious private jail, his escape, through to his eventual capture and shooting--is told in hundreds of photographs gathered by photographer James Mollison in Colombia. Exhaustively researched, this visual biography includes photographs from Escobar family albums, pictures by Escobar's bodyguards, pictures from police files (both shot by the police and taken in raids on Escobar's premises) and snapshots by the Federal Drug Administration officer who helped hunt Escobar down. The book's illuminating text draws on new interviews with family members, other gangsters, Colombian police and judges and other survivors of Escobar's killing sprees, supplemented by contemporary photographs by Mollison of Escobar's fleet of planes, his private zoo, arms caches captured by the police--and even Escobar's prison jukebox. A compelling picture story and a landmark in visual journalism.

In the years since his death in 1993, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has become a globally recognized symbol of crime, wealth, power, and masculinity. In this long-overdue exploration of Escobar’s impact on popular culture, Aldona Bialowas Pobutsky shows how his legacy inspired the development of narcoculture—television, music, literature, and fashion representing the drug-trafficking lifestyle—in Colombia and around the world. Pobutsky looks at the ways the “Escobar brand” surfaces in bars, restaurants, and clothing lines; in Colombia’s tourist industry; and in telenovelas, documentaries, and narco memoirs about his life, which in turn have generated popular interest in other drug traffickers such as Griselda Blanco and Miami’s “cocaine cowboys.” Pobutsky illustrates how the Colombian state strives to erase his memory while Escobar’s notoriety only continues to increase in popular culture through the transnational media. She argues that the image of Escobar is inextricably linked to Colombia’s internal tensions in the areas of cocaine politics, gender relations, class divisions, and political corruption and that his “brand” perpetuates the country’s reputation as a center of organized crime, to the dismay of the Colombian people. This book is a fascinating study of how the world perceives Colombia and how Colombia’s citizens understand their nation’s past and present. A volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America, edited by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez

The popular series Narcos captures only half the truth. This riveting, deeply personal memoir by Pablo Escobar's son reveals the full story.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Seven-year-old Chula lives a carefree life in her gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside her walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar reigns, capturing the attention of the nation. “Simultaneously propulsive and poetic, reminiscent of Isabel Allende...Listen to this new author’s voice—she has something powerful to say.” —Entertainment Weekly When her mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city’s guerrilla-occupied neighborhood, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona’s mysterious ways. Petrona is a young woman crumbling under the burden of providing for her family as the rip tide of first love pulls her in the opposite direction. As both girls’ families scramble to maintain stability amidst the rapidly escalating conflict, Petrona and Chula find themselves entangled in a web of secrecy. Inspired by the author's own life, Fruit of the Drunken Tree is a powerful testament to the impossible choices women are often forced to make in the face of violence and the unexpected connections that can blossom out of desperation.

This interdisciplinary volume investigates the cultural and political landscapes of Colombia through citizenship, displacement, local and global cultures, grass-root movements, political activism, human rights, environmentalism, and media productions.

* National Bestseller and winner of the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award * Hailed by Edmund White as "a brilliant new novel" on the cover of the New York Times Book Review * Lauded by Jonathan Franzen, E. L. Doctorow and many others From a global literary star comes a prize-winning tour de force – an intimate portrayal of the drug wars in Colombia. Juan Gabriel Vásquez has been hailed not only as one of South America’s greatest literary stars, but also as one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation. In this gorgeously wrought, award-winning novel, Vásquez confronts the history of his home country, Colombia. In the city of Bogotá, Antonio Yammara reads an article about a hippo that had escaped from a derelict zoo once owned by legendary Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The article transports Antonio back to when the war between Escobar’s Medellín cartel and government forces played out violently in Colombia’s streets and in the skies above. Back then, Antonio witnessed a friend’s murder, an event that haunts him still. As he investigates, he discovers the many ways in which his own life and his friend’s family have been shaped by his country’s recent violent past. His journey leads him all the way back to the 1960s and a world on the brink of change: a time before narco-trafficking trapped a whole generation in a living nightmare. Vásquez is “one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature,” according to Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, and The Sound of Things Falling is his most personal, most contemporary novel to date, a masterpiece that takes his writing—and will take his literary star—even higher.

I've begged God for forgiveness, but I won't know till the day I die if He has truly forgiven me ... I've paid my dues to society by serving my long sentence, but perhaps I haven't earned His indulgence ... Oh my God, I've lived so many different lives! I survived Pablo Escobar Gaviria, El Patrón (The Boss), and it was the strength of his indomitable spirit that kept me going all these years; I don't quite know how or why. I still feel his presence every day of my existence. The Medellin cartel's crimes weigh as heavily on my shoulders today as they did yesterday. My youth, wasted in crime, became the sword that now hangs over my graying head. To the world, I'll always be known by my alias, Popeye, the fearsome hitman of the Medellin cartel, Pablo Escobar Gaviria's right-hand man ... How can I make you understand I'm a new man ... that twenty-three years behind bars in that hellhole have transformed the person I once was. Now the freedom I yearned for is vanishing in the murderous hands of my enemies. Perhaps fate has extended my life only to toy with me by preparing my own dying moments. I survived in captivity but I don't know if I'll be able to live in freedom ... A prisoner of my own mind, I'll try to fight to find some peace ... It's very cold ... now it's August 2014. I'm one step from freedom and I'm still breathing ... still here in this dimly lit cell in the maximum security prison in Cómbita, Boyacá.