Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You

Finalist, National Book Awards 2026 for Fiction

pretend you're dead and i'll carry you book cover with finalist medallion
ISBN 9781324097204
Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company
Julián Delgado Lopera headshot
Julián Delgado Lopera

Julián Delgado Lopera is the author of Fiebre Tropical, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and finalist for the Kirkus Prize and Aspen Literary Prize, among other honors. Born and raised in Colombia, Julián teaches Creative Writing at College of Staten Island CUNY. He lives in Brooklyn. More about this author >

Award Years

Award Status

Award Categories

From the publisher:

Cloistered in a dreary Bogotá apartment, Ignacio’s light has dimmed, leaving his teenage daughter, Valentina, to raise herself in the wake of her mother Alma’s death. Lonely and love-starved, Valentina aches to discover the details of her mother’s drowning, and for her father to snap out of his depression. But Ignacio can’t. He spends listless afternoons smoking cigarettes in long blonde wigs, telenovelas humming in the background, haunted not only by matrimonial guilt, but by memories of a young man he once loved and betrayed.

From Ignacio’s tragic past emerges the luminous queen of Bogotá’s queer underground, Mamadora Eléctrica, the wise travesti who he first met under the silvery lights of Club Aquario when he was just a shy country boy. With Alma gone, Mamadora steps in as a mother figure to Valentina the way she once did for the girl’s father. But as an expert in Travesti Lore, she fears the worst: that Ignacio’s self-destruction may have unleashed a curse on them all.

X