Of Cattle and Men
Ana Paula Maia, Zoë Perry (translation)Winner of the 2023 Cercador Prize
Shortlisted for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness Prize
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Animals go mad & men die (accidentally & 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 & over again, as the stun operator at Senhor Milo’s slaughterhouse: reliable, responsible, quietly dispatching cows & 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 & 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, & animals, to murder & madness.
Ana Paula Maia & Zoë Perry’s Of Cattle & Men is markedly less beatific, instead evoking something akin to biblical wrath in its depiction of a sequestered slaughterhouse beset by karmic hardship. Whether bad luck, rival agitators, or a full-fledged moral reckoning is to blame for the trouble, the undeniable result is nothing less than an accursed, all-consuming inferno of piety & rage. OF CATTLE & MEN "lays bare the brutal labor of the slaughterhouse trade," & is a "new breed of western." —The Cercador Prize
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Ana Paula Maia (Brazil, 1977) is an author & scriptwriter & has published several novels, including O habitante das falhas subterráneas (2003), De gados e homens (2013), & the trilogy A saga dos brudos, comprising Entre de cachorros e porcos abatidos (2009), O trabalho sujo dos outros (2009) & Carvão animal (2011).
Zoë Perry has translated work by Brazilian & Portuguese authors, including: Emilio Fraia & Veronica Stigger.