Read it in the Green Room

Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You

Julián Delgado Lopera

Liveright · 2026

  • writingStriking, indelible phrasing
  • paceNonlinear, past and present
  • atmosphereHaunting, unflinching

A nonlinear Colombian family story: a daughter pieces together her father's life of repression and secret desire between Bogotá and the Magdalena River. Pick it for lush, fierce language.

Beta invites go out in waitlist order. One devlog email a month, at most — or just read the devlog.

The Green Room

Backstage of Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You.

Walk in mid-chapter. The people of the book are there, as themselves, knowing what they know so far — and nothing else. Ask them anything. They have read exactly as far as you have.

A moment in the Green Room

Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You · Julián Delgado Lopera

The narrator

Of Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You, as they are at your reading place

You

What happens next?

The narrator

“I can only tell you what you have read. Past your page there is nothing yet — not for you, and not for me. Turn it, and come back.”

Their knowledge stops where your reading does.

Illustrative conversation. The app answers from the passages you have read.

Who is in the room

Anyone who has walked on by your page.

The cast

Any character who has appeared so far. Someone who hasn’t walked on yet isn’t in the room. That’s not a limitation; that’s the point.

The narrator

The voice telling you the story, as far as it has told it.

The author

As the book presents them — the mind behind the pages you have read, not a biography.

The book itself

Ask what it is doing to you so far. It answers from its own pages, up to yours.

Before you go in

What critics and prize juries said.

Editorial synthesis

Kirkus Reviews called it a stark portrait of the damage passed from parent to child and a haunting, nonlinear novel shaped by grief and secrecy. Publishers Weekly described a scintillating narrative of a man torn between belonging and self-expression, with striking, indelible phrasing, and judged it exquisite.

Drawn from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly.

How it stays unspoiled

Nothing past your page exists.

The companion is assembled from the passages you have read and only those. A character who knows the ending is no one worth talking to, so there is no override — not behind a setting, not behind a confirmation. Your position is the wall.

You are here

Get the book

One ebook. Yours.

US$30.39ebook · eBooks.com

Buy the ebook once, read it in Green Room — or in any reader you already use.

Get the ebook at eBooks.com

Reading, narration and Green Room compatibility not yet verified for the retailer edition.

The cast has been waiting for you.

Join the waitlist — beta invites go out in order, and the devlog keeps you honest company until then.