The difficult light

Author: Tomás González The narrator and protagonist in La luz difícil (The Difficult Light) is David, a Colombian artist who in his old age is losing his eyesight and, unable to paint anymore, is reduced to writing with the help of a magnifying glass. The novel alternates between two main settings: his present everyday life in a peaceful Colombian town, attended by a family of farmers, and a particular day in New York, 18 years in the past, a day when the whole family waited in agony while Jacobo, his elder son, crippled in an accident, sought release in euthanasia from a life fraught with unbearable pain.