On Earth As It Is Beneath
Ana Paula Maia author Padma Viswanathan translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Charco Press
Publishing:12th Aug '25
£11.99
This title is due to be published on 12th August, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
On land where enslaved people were once tortured and murdered, the state built a penal colony in the wilderness, where inmates could be rehabilitated, but never escape. Now, decades later, and having only succeeded in trapping men, not changing them for the better, its operations are winding down. But in the prison’s waning days, a new horror is unleashed: every full-moon night, the inmates are released, the warden is armed with rifles, and the hunt begins. Every man plans his escape, not knowing if his end will come at the hands of a familiar face, or from the unknown dangers beyond the prison walls. Ana Paula Maia has once again delivered a bracing vision of our potential for violence, and our collective failure to account for the consequences of our social and political action, or inaction. No crime is committed out of view for this novelist, and her raw, brutal power enlists us all as witness.
"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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Praise for Ana Paula Maia
"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
ISBN: 9781917260107
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
112 pages