On the outskirts of Belén del Chamí, a town that has yet to appear on any map of Colombia, the mute Salomón Palacios is murdered a few steps away from his home. His widow, the courageous and foul-mouthed Hipólita Arenas, completely loses her sanity and confronts the paramilitaries and local politicians, challenging them to also kill her and her two fatherless sons. Yet as Hipólita faces her husband's murderers on her desperate journey, she finds an unexpected calling to stay alive. This poetic and hypnotizing novel, told from the perspective of Salomón's ghost, denounces the brutal killings of innocent citizens and at the same time celebrates the invisible: imagination, memories, hope, and the connection to afterlife.

Ricardo Silva Romero is one of Colombia's most beloved writers. He is a prolific novelist, columnist, journalist, screenwriter, and film critic. In 2007 he was selected as one of the Bogotá39, a list of the best young writers in Latin America. Río Muerto is a fearless novel exploring the role of violence in Colombian society from an entirely new perspective. It is Silva Romero's first book to be published in English.