Harare Review of Books

196 pp. Published February 18, 2025 by World Editions. Fiction.

The main section of Río Muerto opens with a murder, told from the perspective of the victim. The murderers are a gang of thugs, enforcers for the anti-government forces that have taken control of a town hidden away in the mountains of Colombia. The murder happens just outside Salomón’s home, and his widow, Hipólita, and her two sons are the ones who find his body.

These are the perspectives we follow throughout the novel—those of Hipólita and her sons, and also Salomón, who, having been murdered simply for not taking sides, cannot rest until his family is safely away from Belén del Chamí. Through the following month and more, we see Salomón attempt to intervene as Hipólita, mad with grief, and suicidal, confronts all the local forces who are complicit in her husband’s murder and who have created an atmosphere of terror in the town.

This is a bitter and wrenching novel that’s based on real events in Colombia. In an Afterword, Silva Romero explains Colombia’s long history of senseless violence that’s come at such horrific, unspeakable cost to civilians. He says,

One could say that everything that has happened here--life, art, development, progress--has happened in between wars.

For now, a fragile peace holds,

But the war continues and will continue, with its Colombian features and with justice in chains, as long as the drug business continues.

Río Muerto is an important record and a howl of pain for the citizens of a country riven by terrible forces. It’s fiction, but there are possibly thousands of Salomóns and Hipólitas. One of the functions of literature is to help us understand events, to place those events in context; what would war mean without stories of its cost? In Río Muerto, Silva Romero has put what may seem like far away news headlines into terms the rest of us can understand. A lacerating and unforgettable read.

Thanks to World Editions and Edelweiss for early access.

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