Esta herida llena de peces

In Quibdó, a white mother boards a canoe with her five-year-old Black son. They set out on a long journey north along the Atrato river.

The questions of the other travellers — and the mother's own inner journey — slowly reveal something devastating: the woman who has raised the boy almost since birth must now give him back to his birth mother.

Among mangroves, fruit and braided hair, the novel moves at the pace of the water and of fear, in a region where violence is part of the landscape.