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

By the International Booker Prize Longlisted Author of On Earth As It Is Beneath

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

Cercador Prize (Winner)
Republic of Consciousness Prize (Winner)
English PEN Translates Award

"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

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Praise for Ana Paula Maia
"A stunning thriller of sorts. So understated. So powerful. So heartbreaking. Worked for me completely on both the level of a human story and as a warning parable for our times"--Republic of Consciousness Prize 2024

International Booker Prize (Longlist)
Republic of Consciousness Prize US (Longlist)
English PEN Translates Award
São Paulo Prize for Literature (Winner)

"Beautiful and gripping... a must read for those who like their poetry written in blood." --New York Times

"On Earth As It Is Beneath is a stark, unsettling exploration of power, violence, destruction and institutional corruption that will linger with readers long after the final page." --Booker Prize Judges

"Maia has delivered a masterclass in suspense and allegory." --Morning Star

"A thinking person's sociological thriller that is also somehow a sort of fable, as tough to endure as it is to put down." --Southwest Review

"A fast-paced and impactful book (...) Ana Paula Maia treads her own path, and it's a brutal one. All the better for us." --Escotilha

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"Not from the soul, nor from the heart. Ana Paula Maia's characters suffer from the liver." --O Estado de S. Paulo

"One must possess a profound understanding of fiction, of reality, and of the representation of reality to be able to write like this." --O Globo

"Amid the most repugnant manoeuvres, Ana Paula Maia discovers the mythic tone of a biblical curse, cloaked beneath the pop sensibilities of the surface." --Rolling Stone Brazil

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About the Author

Ana Paula Maia is the author of On Earth As It Is Beneath, longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026. Her novel Of Cattle and Men won the UK Republic of Consciousness Prize, the inaugural Cercador Prize for Literature in Translation in the United States, and an English PEN Translates Award. An award-winning Brazilian writer and scriptwriter, she is widely regarded as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Brazilian fiction.

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.