Crooked Plow, Itamar Vieira Junior
'I heard our grandmother asking what we were doing.'"Say something!" she demanded, threatening to tear out our tongues. Little did she know that one of us was holding her tongue in her hand.'
Deep in Brazil's neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother's bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever.
Heralded as a new masterpiece and the most important Brazilian novel of this century, this fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in the Brazil's poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery in that country is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath and political struggle.
Itamar Vieira Junior reading from Crooked Plow
Crooked Plow has received the Prémio Leya, a prestigious Portuguese literary prize, and is Itamar’s English language debut novel. This gripping tale has been skilfully translated by Johnny Lorenz, who also reads this exclusive extract for us on the podcast.
A perfect story for lovers of The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante, or Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor.
Damian Barr’s Literary Salon is where the freshest debuts and the biggest bestsellers read for the first time from their latest greatest books and share their own personal stories.
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