Of Cattle and Men - by Ana Paula Maia (Paperback)

About the Book

"In a landscape worthy of Cormac McCarthy, the river runs septic with blood. Edgar Wilson makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of a cow, then stuns it with a mallet. He does this over and over again, as the stun operator at Senhor Milo's slaughterhouse: reliable, responsible, quietly dispatching cows and following orders, wherever that may take him. It's important to calm the cows, especially now that they seem so unsettled: they have begun to run in panic into walls and over cliffs. Bronco Gil, the foreman, thinks it's a jaguar or a wild boar. Edgar Wilson has other suspicions. But what is certain is that there is something in this desolate corner of Brazil driving men, and animals, to murder and madness."--

Book Synopsis

Animals go mad and men die (accidentally and not) at a slaughterhouse in an impoverished, isolated corner of Brazil.

In a landscape worthy of Cormac McCarthy, the river runs septic with blood. Edgar Wilson makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of a cow, then stuns it with a mallet. He does this over and over again, as the stun operator at Senhor Milo's slaughterhouse: reliable, responsible, quietly dispatching cows and following orders, wherever that may take him. It's important to calm the cows, especially now that they seem so unsettled: they have begun to run in panic into walls and over cliffs. Bronco Gil, the foreman, thinks it's a jaguar or a wild boar. Edgar Wilson has other suspicions. But what is certain is that there is something in this desolate corner of Brazil driving men, and animals, to murder and madness.

Review Quotes

"This short sharp shock of a book brings a surprise with every new page...a fresh and spirited report on how civilisation has done nothing to tame humanity's worst instincts." --The Guardian

"Brutal yet gripping, as if Cormac McCarthy penned an anti-meat noir." --Kirkus

"Intense and provocative....This goes straight for the jugular." --Publishers Weekly

"In Perry's visceral, understated translation...the narrative unfolds with the compulsiveness of a psychological thriller." --The Times Literary Supplement

"Maia's stark style lends her novella a chilling, detached quality, allowing the violence and viscera to be all the more overwhelming." --Jeremy Garber, Powell's Bookshop

"Biblical in scale and language, Of Cattle and Men is a book to squirm beneath; to measure oneself against." --Southwest Review

"Of Cattle and Men is an excellent book of many dark, quiet questions." --World Literature Today

"Powerful." --EcoLit Books

About the Author

Ana Paula Maia (Nova Iguaçu, Brazil, 1977) is an author and scriptwriter who has published several novels, including O habitante das falhas subterráneas (2003), and the 'Saga of Brutes' trilogy which comprises Entre rinhas de cachorros e porcos abatidos (2009), O trabalho sujo dos outros (2009) and Carvão animal (2011). De gados e homens (2013), translated for Charco Press as Of Cattle and Men by Zoë Perry (2023) won the UK Republic of Consciousness Prize 2023 as well as the inaugural Cercador Prize for Literature in Translation in the US. Maia also won the São Paulo Literature Prize for Best Novel of the Year two years in a row: in 2018 for the novel On Earth as it is Beneath, and in 2019 for Bury Your Dead, forthcoming from Charco Press in 2027.

Zoë Perry is a Canadian-American translator who has translated work by several contemporary Portuguese-language authors, including Emilio Fraia, Clara Drummond, Rodrigo de Souza Leão, Lourenço Mutarelli, and Carol Bensimon. Her translations have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, Astra, n+1 and The Paris Review. Zoë was awarded a PEN/Heim grant for her translation of Veronica Stigger's Opisanie Swiata and was selected for a residency at the Banff International Translation Centre for her translation of Emilio Fraia's Sevastopol . Her translation of Ana Paula Maia's Of Cattle and Men won the inaugural Cercador Prize for Literature in Translation in 2023. She is a founding member of the Starling Bureau, a translators collective.