Laura Restrepo is a woman of action. The renowned Colombian novelist and political journalist—who spent the 1980s covering Colombia’s drug trade and cartels—has lived, at various points, in Argentina, Mexico, Europe, and the U.S., and has traveled around the world to report on humanitarian crises. “I’ve lived all over the place—it’s been my destiny, whether I chose it or not,” Restrepo says via Zoom from her home in Pereira, a tropical and rainy haven in the coffee-growing district of Colombia, in the foothills of the Andes. She describes it as “a peaceful place, a gentle jungle,” adding, “Violence is much calmer here than in the rest of the country.”
Restrepo moved to Pereira earlier this year from Catalonia, where she lived for a decade with her husband, Carlos Payán Velver, a prominent Mexican politician and founder of the newspaper La Jornada, who died in 2023. “Colombia is a difficult place to live, always has been, but there’s a huge love for life and a lot of energy,” she explains. “I wanted to go back to where things were livelier.”
A literary star across Latin America and Europe, Restrepo is the author of 11 acclaimed novels that mix reportage and fiction and explore love, madness, female power, family disfunction, and the impact of drugs. They include Isle of Passion, her 1989 debut; Leopard in the Sun; and Delirium, which won the Premio Alfaguara de Novela prize and was turned into a 2024 Netflix series. Her work has been translated into 24 languages, according to her publisher, HarperVia.
Restrepo’s lyrical new novel, Song of Ancient Lovers, out in December, is a multilayered story, blending myth and reality, that’s set primarily in war-torn Yemen, in the refugee camps of the present day. It’s also a retelling, in shifting chapters, of the legend of the Queen of Sheba and her romance with King Solomon. It follows Bos Mutas, a South American academic who is obsessed with the Queen of Sheba and travels to Yemen to research her story. There, Bos meets Somali midwife Zahra Bayda, who works for Doctors Without Borders. Bos visits refugee camps with Zahra, helps deliver supplies, witnesses war’s devastation, and meets refugees and local women who claim they’re the Queen of Sheba’s descendants. As the story unfolds, Bos and Zahra grow closer, and Bos begins to appreciate that the Queen of Sheba was many things (a leader, a survivor) and that her spirit can be felt in strong women throughout history and in the refugees of today.
“My characters are always going through rough situations, but they’re not defeated,” Restrepo says. “Depression, sadness, that’s
a field I run away from.”
Restrepo was inspired to write Song of Ancient Lovers, which has been translated from the Spanish by Caro De Robertis, after taking a monthlong trip to Yemen in 2009 as a reporter with Doctors Without Borders. “The Yemen desert is unsettling and hypnotizing, like seeing the sea for the first time,” she says. “Roads disappear as the wind blows.” She visited refugee camps, where women—many of whom, like the women in the novel, claimed to be the Queen of Sheba’s descendants—handed her notes, asking for help with escaping or finding loved ones. “This novel is a form of translating those small handwritten notes for the rest of the world,” Restrepo explains.
The author visited cities throughout Yemen and, a couple of years later, traveled to Ethiopia as a reporter and to do further research for Song of Ancient Lovers, which took 11 years to complete. “I visited the places where prostitutes, lepers, and beggars live,” she says. “I never took pictures or recordings. People are intimidated by that. At night, I’d write it down before it faded away.”
Gabriella Page-Fort, Restrepo’s editor, praises her ability to write panoramic and unexpected books. “The force Laura carries throughout the Spanish-reading universe is immense,” Page-Fort says. “As an author, there isn’t a corner of the written world she doesn’t get into.
I’d follow her everywhere.”
Born in 1950 in Bogotá, Restrepo moved often as a child with her parents and sister. “My mother was always living in one place, dreaming of another,” she says. The author has a degree in philosophy and letters and a postgraduate degree in political science, both from the University of Los Andes, Bogotá—but life has always been her preferred classroom.
In her 20s, eager to effect change, Restrepo worked in the Socialist Workers Party in Spain, as well as in the underground movement in Argentina that opposed the country’s military dictatorship. (“A writer must be on the opposite side of power,” she notes.)
In 1980, she gave birth to her son, then worked in Colombia as a journalist covering the drug trade, and became a target of drug lord Pablo Escobar. “One day, a man who knew Escobar came to my house and said, ‘Pablo’s going to kill you,’ ” she recalls. “That’s a story that can be told by thousands of Colombian journalists. Many got killed. I was lucky.”
In 1984, Restrepo was selected by Colombia’s president to join a negotiating committee that aimed to facilitate peace talks with the country’s M-19 guerillas. She received death threats because of her involvement and went into exile for several years in Mexico, where she wrote Isle of Passion, a historical drama about Clipperton Island in the eastern Pacific, inspired by true events. “I had a hard time getting it published,” she says. “Editors asked, Is this literature or journalism? I have a tendency to break borders between genres.”
Thomas Colchie, Restrepo’s agent and a noted translator, began representing her in the ’90s after her work was recommended to him by Gabriel García Márquez. “That was unusual at the time,” Colchie remembers. “Latin American male authors were unlikely to give endorsements for women writers. Laura was one of the key authors to change how women writers in Latin America thought of themselves, and how they were received.”
For Restrepo, a remarkable woman who radiates passion and warmth, telling women’s stories is vital. In Song of Ancient Lovers, she imagines the Queen of Sheba’s rise from poverty to power and weaves this into a wider tale about the refugee crisis—one that explores how women harness hope in dark times. The author dedicated the novel to her late husband, who infused her days with positivity. “He was a magical person who saw life in a wonderful light,” she says.
Restrepo is settling into life in Pereira—unpacking boxes, enjoying time with her son and dogs. “When I’m working, I forget about everything except feeding the dogs,” she says. “That I never forget.” Her home’s wraparound windows offer views of the surrounding tropical landscape—there are birds and monkeys, and the occasional puma sighting at the nearby river. It’s a fine place to get lost writing.
“Even if you write about faraway regions, you’re just writing about yourself,” Restrepo says. “If you read my books, you know who I am.”
Elaine Szewczyk’s writing has appeared in McSweeney’s and other publications. She’s the author of the novel I’m with Stupid.
