Héctor Abad is a Colombian novelist, journalist and publisher. He writes a weekly column for Colombian newspaper El Espectador and is one of Latin America’s most revered and successful authors. His family was torn apart by his country’s civil war when rightwing paramilitaries murdered his father, a doctor and prominent human-rights defender, something he chronicled in Oblivion: A Memoir. A peace deal was reached in late 2016 with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or Farc), a leftist rebel army, formally ending a conflict that killed 260,000 people and left 7 million displaced. Abad’s new novel, The Farm, follows a family as it struggles to live among guerrillas, paramilitaries, army soldiers and drug lords.

Is the Colombia of the book based on the country you grew up in?

Yes, it’s the Colombia I grew up in. The tropic of the high mountain is one of the world’s most unique regions. There are no seasons – never hot and never cold. It’s monotonous but magnificent and always green. At the same time, it’s a territory in which violence and territorial disputes have been present, like a paradise constantly threatened. The peasants feel the pressure and threat of the landlords; the land owners feel the threat of the guerrillas. The guerrillas felt the threat of the paramilitaries. The paramilitaries ended up killing anyone and allying themselves with the narcos. Some of the narcos were also guerrillas. Everything became very difficult to understand and very chaotic, until no one even knew where the violence came from. And the state is a distant, corrupt and absent thing.

A resentful country is a country that is always on the verge of more conflict

Are the experiences of the novel’s central Angel family typical of families that have lived during the conflict?

Half of Colombians live in poverty or extreme poverty, while 1% is infinitely rich. I’m from the remaining 49%, like the Angel family, and they are quite typical. It’s a middle-class novel and most readers are also middle class. The very rich and the very poor only think of one thing: to gain or to hold on to money.

What made you decide to tell the story of The Farm from different viewpoints?

The novels that I like are usually pluralistic with the same reality described differently according to one’s own experience. That is why in the novel, in the voices of three brothers, the same story is told differently according to the character of each one. In Spanish, it is said that everyone talks about the party according to how they saw it. Some dance, some don’t. Some talk a lot and get drunk; others just watch. Novels should give voice to all those who are at the same party, drunk or sober, enjoying or suffering it.

How difficult was it to delve into the Colombian conflict for this novel having lost your father to it?

I own a farm very similar to the one in the novel. My sisters and I inherited it from my father and when a father is murdered, his inheritance becomes like a fetish. The house is charged with life: it is as if it were him, a part of him. The difficult thing for me to understand was how each sibling has a different relationship with that house, with that memory. All had the same father, all knew the same house, but not everyone sees it in the same way. The same goes for a country. Who killed your father or your brother? If the guerrillas killed him, you think one thing; if the paramilitaries killed him or the police, you think something else. And the novelist has to feel like all of them and must be stuck in the minds of all the victims, also in the minds of those who were lucky not to be victims.

How does a country recover after so many years of internal conflict?

One of the things left at the end of a conflict is a deep distrust and resentment of others. Depending on your suffering you may think that all the pain is caused by the narcos, the guerrillas or the paramilitaries. A resentful country is a country that is always on the verge of more conflict. Some speak of the importance of remembering. I think we should also be able to forget a bit. Much like David Rieff proposes; do not remember all the time. Do not sink into rancour. Move on. Do not always look to the past or even to the future. Try to live better right now, in the present.

What role can literature play in forming Colombia’s historical memory?

I believe that novels are condensing machines for stories. In a farm, the history of a country can be reflected, because history passes through its terrain and leaves traces. The war leaves traces. In Gabriel García Márquez, one massacre stands for all the massacres. In Evelio Rosero, armies without a name can be the guerrillas, the paramilitaries or the regular army. In Juan Gabriel Vásquez, German Jews are treated like Nazis during the second world war. In Santiago Gamboa, sex is the substitute for many other frustrations. In my novel Oblivion, a good man murdered becomes the symbol of many innocent victims killed unjustly. Novels help us understand and understand each other.

Which book would you give to a young person?

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, so that children, especially girls, realise that they can be strong, courageous and independent. Or Robinson Crusoe, because it allows you to dream that you alone can build one whole world without help from anyone. That the shipwrecked can survive misfortune.

What’s the last really great book you read? What made it great?

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. His perspective on fiction as something that shapes and unifies different societies and different human epochs seemed completely new to me. He is very intelligent, very strange and very convincing.

What books are on your bedside table?

Two years ago, I founded a small publishing house in Medellín, Angosta, with my wife, to publish young new Colombian writers in short stories, novels and nonfiction by young new Colombian writers and to publish new translations of classics. We just published a translation I did of Candide by Voltaire and one by Juan Gabriel Vásquez of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Those two classics are on my nightstand because they say a lot about the stupidity of wars and the abysses of evil that violence can lead us to – in the tropics, but everywhere else too.

Héctor Abad will be speaking at Waterstones, Gower Street, London WC1E 6EQ on Friday 12 October. Tickets cost £8/£6.

• The Farm by Héctor Abad (translated by Anne McLean) is published by World Editions Ltd (£12.99). To order a copy for £11.17 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99