Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You: A Novel

From the award-winning author of Fiebre Tropical, an electric, highly anticipated novel set in Colombia’s underground queer scene.

Isolated in a dreary Bogotá apartment, Ignacio’s light has dimmed, leaving his teenage daughter Valentina to raise herself in the wake of her mother’s death. Valentina longs to discover the details of her mother’s drowning and for Ignacio to snap out of his depression―his listless afternoons spent smoking cigarettes in long blonde wigs, telenovelas humming in the background, haunted by memories of the young man he loved and betrayed.

From Ignacio’s dark past emerges the luminous Mamadora Eléctrica, the wise travesti who introduced Ignacio to the city’s queer scene years prior. Stepping into a maternal role for Valentina, Mamadora fears the worst: that Ignacio’s self-loathing may have unleashed a curse on them all. A profound and irreverent story about coming undone, Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You affirms Julián Delgado Lopera as a brilliant and singular voice―“a writer who is grinding their own colors” (Dwight Garner, The New York Times).