Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Spanish (Colombia) by Victor Meadowcroft – Published 2025

Set in the rural village of Bélen de Chami in Colombia in the early 1990s this is a disturbing description of a community in the throes of a seemingly unending civil war.

Specifically, it concerns a family of four, parents Salomon and Hipólita, and their two young boys, aged 10 and 12. Salomon, a mute, is taken from his home and executed in the street, just an ordinary man in the wrong place at the wrong time. For the large part, the narrative is from his perspective, as a ghost.

This is a society in which the gangs, the corrupt authorities, and the violence are thriving.

Hipólita announces to her sons that they must find the men responsible for Salomon’s death, and by doing so, they will ensure that they, too, will be murdered, and join their father in an afterlife that will unquestionably be an improvment on a future without hope.

This is an exceptional novel, with its theme firmly rooted in resilience and determination to survive at all costs, and one that doesn’t flinch from the horrors of the civil war. Romero is well-known as a novelist, journalist, screenwriter and film critic in Colombia, but Río Muerto is the first of his works to have been translated into English. If this is anthing to go by, it is hoped World Editions will enable more of his fiction to be read in English.

My GoodReads score 5 / 5