Dead Birds Catalog

A novel about grief and lucidity that turns a natural mystery—the mass suicide of birds—into a masterful exploration of loss, guilt, and community. An ambitious, precious, and moving narrative artifact.

After his wife’s suicide, professor Leonídas Castro embarks on a journey to the Ozogoche Lagoons with his son to witness the ritual suicide of the Cuvivies, birds that launch themselves into the water every September—an investigation that his biologist wife left unfinished. In that festive and ritualistic Andean landscape, a young tourist turns up dead, unleashing a chorus of voices that reconstruct the tragedy and unfurl a web of documentation, myths, science, and philosophy about human and animal suicide. Years later, the son returns from a different landscape (Jatinga, India) to close the circle as the novel asks a persistent question with intelligence and a lyrical pulse: how do we live with things that have no explanation?

“One of the unmissable voices of the already extraordinary new generation of Latin American poets.” —Raúl Zurita