Awesome book.

Shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize. Follows the lives of sisters Belonísia and Bibiana and their family — Black subsistence farmers in rural Brazil’s poorest region — after a catastrophic accident that leaves one of the sisters mute. The novel is both fantastic and realistic and explores themes of family, spirituality, race, class, and political struggle. The characters are well developed – including the sisters and their father, a healer with the ability to summon spirits – and the sense of place is strong. The narrative is non-chronological, going back in time to reveal personal secrets and building suspense. The novel is sometimes heavy-handed and melodramatic but there is also an epic sense of grandeur in the struggles of these impoverished, exploited descendants of slaves.

A wonderful book. Imaginative. Beautifully written.

excellent book

The best Brazilian writer 👏👏👏

I finally read “Torto Arado” by Itamar Vieira Júnior, the most widely acclaimed book in Brazilian contemporary fiction. I read it in Portuguese not because I don't believe in translation — the English translation by Johnny Lorenz is a marvel, and it is my opinion that the translator should have been featured on the cover. I confess I was inclined to leave aside the Portuguese version and embrace Lorenz’s translation many times. Before you, reader, accuse me of imperialist inclinations, a disdain for writers of color, or any other trope that's been hurled by the author himself in his more controversial criticisms of critics, allow me to say this: it is the writing that grabs a reader by the throat, not the book's ideology, political leanings, active stance, or any other purpose that might serve the zeitgeist of progressivism. And Itamar's writing — I will call him by his name — did not grab me in my native tongue.

I plowed, struggled, cut through the tall grass fields, and labored under a scorching sun. Torto Arado was excruciatingly difficult for me as a literary experience, and I took no pleasure from it. It began with the opening scene. A seven-year-old girl finds a knife. A seven-year-old girl finds a knife in her grandmother's not-so-well-hidden suitcase, though forbidden fruit nonetheless. Visualizing that scene, a critical part of the narrative, was difficult to the point of painful. I tripped on so many adjectives, I stumbled on such a profusion of descriptions, explanations, and minutia that I fell on my face, no cushion to break the crash; my hands were holding the book. After that first nosedive, I set the book aside atop a pile of “laters.” The “laters” are the ones that hold promise, that have yet to be permanently discarded to the pile of the “hopeless.” No, I would not do that to Itamar's book. I was determined to get through it because…well, because.

Itamar's first book is a faithful description of a country that is never accurately portrayed, frequently dismissed, often discarded. My deep admiration for Graciliano Ramos’ work, my reverence for “Vidas Secas,” my ineffable adoration of Baleia would not allow me to let go of “Torto Arado.” And thus, I persisted. The sisters tasted the bitter metal of the blade, felt the strange metallic sweetness of blood on their tongues, and were baptized by violence in that act. A violence that endures and kills and maims and beheads and shatters and exterminates and knows no boundaries. It's in the favelas of Rio, in the periphery of São Paulo, in the outskirts of every major Brazilian city, and in their midst. It is in the Northeast. It is at the center of Brazil's historical anatomy, the pulsating African ventricle, the land of the Orixás. So much power to evoke through lyricism, so much left at the hands of academicism.

That is my gripe with Itamar. I love what he embraces. I despise how he has done it. At the risk of enraging my readers, many of whom I presume to be fans of the writer, “Torto Arado” is an example of writing misused from start to finish. Fiction is not about didacticism; it is not about taking the reader by the hand and saying to them, “Look, let me show. I don't trust you to see for yourself. I have no confidence in your imagination, nor do I believe in your capacity to grasp my reality”. Fiction, and the literary kind, in particular, is about giving the reader a world. The writer entrusts the reader with that world and understands that once they have generously shared what lives within them, readers will bring it into themselves by shaping a new world into clay that fits their anatomy and perspective. If a writer can achieve such a feat, his book, his characters, the settings he imagined will lodge in the reader's imagination, possibly, forever. Itamar failed to do that for me with the unnatural language attributed to his character, the best example being a narrator who refers to her grandmother by first name, not “vó”, not “voinha".

Yes, Itamar brings deep Brazil to the fore and fills it with his ideas and his politics, with which I agree. But there is great literature without ideas and politics, just as there is genuinely awful literature overflowing with them. Embracing the author's views and disliking his fiction are not incompatible. A world where a work of fiction has to be called a masterpiece simply because it captures the spirit of the times, or the “correct” ideology, or is a call to activism, is a world that defeats art at its core. In this type of world, art is not purposeless, and therefore, it is not art. Rather, it is reduced to propaganda.

As for me, I plowed. I furrowed. I raked parched soil. In the end, I came up short.

Crooked Plow

Itamar Vieira Júnior

Translated from Brazilian 🇧🇷Portuguese by Jonny Lorenz

When I enjoy translated fiction I like to believe that it is due to both excellent writing and great translation.

The flow of this book, the way the words help with understanding of the different points of view, the understanding behind the book title (which I absolutely adored) and the character development makes me give credit to both the author and the translator.

The Crooked Plow starts with a disastrous event that happened to a 7 year old Bibiana and her 6 year old sister Belonisia and follows them through the years into adulthood.

Both sisters live with their parents on a farm in Bahia hinterland, Brazil. Bahia is known for its poverty and drought so this is a story about the lives of subsistence farmers in the Brazil's poorest region.

Covering three generations after the abolition of slavery in that country, it is a fantastic and realist story, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath and political struggle.

A wonderful piece of fiction that brings to light the lesser-told stories of quilombo communities in Northeastern Brazil. The author weaves rich anthropological insight into the narrative, immersing the reader in the lives of the three narrators and their profound resilience in the face of extraordinarily challenging circumstances.

The book tells beautifully the poorly known history of the descendants of Brazilian run-away slaves during the 20th century. It would have been a better book without so much emphasis on esoteric aspects. The shift of narrator without warning, and the excessive use of flashbacks, are also creating confusion.

Great book, will read again.

Itamar Vieira Junior foi tão incrível ao escrever Torto Arado que me levou a escrever meu trabalho de conclusão de curso fazendo uma comparação com a tradução.

E digo mais, a tradução de Johnny Lorenz é primorosa!