Join us

Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Newsletter

Santiago Gamboa

Return to the Dark Valley

Cover: Return to the Dark Valley - Santiago Gamboa

Santiago Gamboa

Return to the Dark Valley

2017, pp. 464, Paperback
ISBN: 9781609454258
Translated by: Howard Curtis
Region: Colombia
Available as ebook Available as ebook Available as ebook
£ 13.99
Where to buy Where to buy Where to buy

The book

A kaleidoscopic, cosmopolitan novel infused with inky noir

Return to the Dark Valley tells the stories of four immigrants united by their need to return to their place of origin and exact vengeance in some form. Manuela Beltrán, haunted by a troubled childhood she tries to escape through books and poetry; Tertuliano, an Argentine preacher who claims to be the Pope’s son, ready to resort to extreme methods to create a harmonious society; Ferdinand Palacios, a Colombian priest with a dark paramilitary past now confronted with his guilt; Juana and the consul, central characters in Gamboa’s Night Prayers, who are united in a relationship based equally on hurt and need. And Rimbaud, the precocious, brilliant poet whose life was incessant exploration. These characters animate Gamboa’s richly imagined portrait of a turbulent world where liberation is found in perpetual movement and determined exploration.

Praise for Santiago Gamboa

“Gamboa’s talent at cultivating intrigue and the extravagant energy of his stories make him compulsive reading.”
Times Literary Supplement

“Gamboa’s work calls to mind Roberto Bolaño in its masterful suspense, complex literary references, and frank depiction of violence, sex, and drugs.”
Publishers Weekly

Gamboa’s wildly inventive book is full of literary ironies and tricksiness, characters declaiming on grand themes and unfettered sex and violence. Reminiscent of Roberto Bolaño, Gamboa here creates a platform for bravura storytelling.”
Metro

The author

Santiago Gamboa
Santiago Gamboa is a novelist, short story writer, and journalist born in Colombia. His English language debut Necropolis, published by Europa Editions in 2012, won the Otra Orilla Literary Prize. He is also the author of Night Prayers (Europa Editions, 2016) and Return to the Dark Valley (Europa Editions, 2018).

Reviews

Books by region

  • Cover: December Breeze - Marvel Moreno

    Marvel Moreno

    December Breeze

    2022, pp. 448, £ 14.99
    A masterful novel exploring womanhood, and the ties of a middle-class, traditional life in 1970s Colombia
  • Cover: Shooting Down Heaven - Jorge Franco

    Jorge Franco

    Shooting Down Heaven

    2020, pp. 352, £ 13.99
    A novel about the children raised by 1990s Colombia’s most dangerous drug lords

More suggestions

  • Cover: Fathers and Fugitives - S J Naudé

    S J Naudé

    Fathers and Fugitives

    2025, pp. 192, £ 9.99
    An inventive and emotionally charged novel about fatherhood and family, loyalty and betrayal, inheritance and belonging.
  • Cover: The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen - Shokoofeh Azar

    Shokoofeh Azar

    The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen

    2025, pp. 400, £ 16.99
    From International Booker Prize finalist Shokoofeh Azar, a stylistically audacious and emotionally powerful novel about one large, complicated family...
  • Cover: All That Remains - Virginie Grimaldi

    Virginie Grimaldi

    All That Remains

    2025, pp. 284, £ 10.99
    A funny and moving story of unlikely friendship from the internationally bestselling author of A Good Life
  • Cover: Shibboleth - Thomas Peermohamed Lambert

    Thomas Peermohamed Lambert

    Shibboleth

    2025, pp. 384, £ 14.99
    A darkly comic tale that brings the satirical English campus novel into the divided, multicultural, hyperactive present day.
  • Cover: City of Fiction - Yu Hua

    Yu Hua

    City of Fiction

    2025, pp. 352, £ 14.99
    A story of love, blood and dreams, set in early 20th century China
  • Cover: The Brittle Age - Donatella Di Pietrantonio

    Donatella Di Pietrantonio

    The Brittle Age

    2025, pp. 192, £ 14.99
    A powerful mother-and-daughter story, a profound exploration of human fragility, and of the haunting shadows of the past