Crooked Plow: A Novel

The prize winning international bestseller - 800,000 copies sold in Brazil

Shortlisted for The International Booker Prize 2024
Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award

'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, this fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in Brazil's poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery, is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath, and political struggle.

Translated by Johnny Lorenz.

Itamar Vieira Junior was born in Salvador, Bahia, in 1979. He holds a doctorate in Ethnic and African Studies. Before Crooked Plow, he published a collection of short stories entitled The Executioner’s Prayer, which was nominated for Brazil’s biggest literary award, the Jabuti. Crooked Plow won the prestigious 2018 LeYa Award in Portugal.

ISBN: 9781839766404
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: June 27, 2023

"An aching yet tender story of our origins of violence, of how we spend our lives trying to bloom love and care from them, and of the language and silence we need to fuel our tending."

—International Booker Prize 2024

"[Brazil's] deep-rooted racial and economic injustices are laid bare in one of the most celebrated Brazilian debut novels of recent times."

—Financial Times Best Books of the Year 2023

"A leading voice among the Black authors who have jolted Brazil’s literary establishment in recent years with imaginative and searing works that have found commercial success and critical acclaim"