CRIACUERVO
ORLANDO ECHEVERRI BENEDETTI
An unexpected novel, like a fierce whirlwind.
Defeated and humiliated by the swift decline of his career as an Olympic swimmer, Adler Zweig has no other option but to consider how to rebuild his life. However, when he receives a photograph of his older brother Klaus through the mail, it raises the possibility of meeting him in a desert somewhere in northern Colombia, where he works as a diver for an oil rig. The person who sent him the picture, Cora Baumann, is an old friend from his childhood, and the ex-girlfriend of his brother. The meeting between Cora and Adler, which at the beginning is focused on the arrangements for the trip to the desert, soon unleashes a meticulous reflection on his own past: the devastation of his childhood, Klaus’ youth devoted to violence, the unfathomable emptiness left in both of them by the death of their parents… but in particular, the love that he has been repressing for Cora Baumann, which will end up costing him his own life.
“One of the most original voices of new Colombian narrative”
Due to a difference in their flight schedules, Cora is forced to travel to Colombia before Adler, and is therefore unaware of the circumstances that will result in his death. In Colombia, Cora realises that Klaus has lost an eye in an accident at work and also that he lives in a prefab bungalow located in a desert known as Criacuervo. Klaus explains to her that the company he used to work for has left the country, and that his only ambition is to stay where he is, isolated from the world, looking out onto a splendid beach, a crumbling oil rig and a lagoon inhabited by flamingos. While waiting in vain for the arrival of Adler, they decide to celebrate the reunion with a celebratory feast, in the depths of the desert. But Klaus’ alcoholism and his personal conflicts will end up transforming the party into a horrific scenario.
This story of a truncated reunion between two brothers explores the path of broken destinies, the illusion of free will, as well as the desperate search for meaning in a path we did not choose.
Finalist for the National Book Prize of the Colombian Ministry of Culture 2018
Published in Colombia: Angosta Editores, 2017 / Chile (Spanish): Edicola Ediciones / Italian: Edicola Ediciones, 2019
Orlando Echeverri Benedetti (Cartagena de Indias, 1980) is a Colombian writer and journalist. He is the author of two novels, Sin freno por la senda equivocada, winner of the national book award in Colombia in 2014, and Criacuervo, published by Angosta Editores in 2017. In 2018 Random House published his collection of short stories, La fiesta en el cañaveral. He worked for the newspaper El Universal, and his writing has been published by the magazine El Malpensante and Universo Centro. He has lived in Argentina and Thailand, and currently lives in Jersey, United Kingdom.