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 (translated by Padma Viswanathan, 2025), and in 2019 for Bury Your Dead, out with Charco Press in 2026.

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.

Reviews

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