Secret love letters hidden in an 1844 copy of Don Quijote

Love in Four Dots is based on coded love letters rich with political intrigue hidden in an 1844 print edition of Don Quixote. Two young lovers, Sofia and Federico, traded the book back and forth between the military prison where Federico was held prisoner and the city of Popayán, Colombia during the One Thousand Days War (1899–1902). It would be their only means of communication for the better half of a year.

The novel, while a work of fiction, serves also as a micro-history of this horrendous civil and military conflict and its impact on the protagonists, their families and the Colombian people as a whole during this tragic period in the nation’s history.

With pencils in hand, Sofía and Federico used two methods to communicate in secret: one using simple dots between the lines of the text under certain letters, and the other somewhat more encrypted, revealed in the subtext of Cervantes’ dialogues between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza read alongside the text with dots.

Using the historical background in combination with the hidden love letters, the author travels in his imagination, filling the voids in the lives of Sofía and Federico, guiding the reader to an unexpected climax that reveals the ties between the characters and the various elements of the plot.