Bogotá: A Novel
Grostephan translated and edited Stories of Life and Death (2005), an anthology of emerging Colombian writers. His debut novel is a portrait of a sick society as manifest in a sprawling city seen through the eyes of a displaced campesino family. Wilfredo had been a ferryman, carrying goods and people across the river on his lovingly cared-for motorboat, but under increasingly alarming pressure from the paramilitary, he barely escapes with his life; his wife, Alba; and their younger son, Hernán, to Bogotá. Alba, pregnant, loses her child in a hospital en route. They survive—live is too strong a word—with Alba’s sister, Lidia, and her husband, Ramón. Their half-built house is in a slum, and the work Wilfredo finds is literally backbreaking. Hernán attends school with Lidia and Ramón’s daughters, and a respectable score on a national exam appears to be the only escape from the war between narco traffickers, gangs, paramilitary groups, and the army. Grostephan’s tale of Colombia is grim and violent: “No more neighborhood cleanup days. The only cleaning is killing.” --Michael Autrey