Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior

‘I’ve traversed centuries; it’s like walking over the surface of a rough river.’- Itamar Vieira Junior, Crooked Plow.

The novel Crooked Plow opens with a shocking violence that sweeps throughout the book. Set in Brazil, the book follows two Afro-Brazilian sisters who live in a subsistence farming community in Bahia, northeast of the country. The girls are quilombolas, descendants of enslaved people who escaped from slavery. After finding their grandmother’s ancient knife under her bed, the girls decide to test its power and the devastating consequence shape their lives forever.

One sibling goes mute as a result of the accident and depends on the other to be her voice. The silence is a symbol for so many things that the novel explores-the continued oppression of Afro-Brazilians after slavery, the double oppression of black women, and the struggle of farmers to protest the injustices at the hands of plantation overseers.

Divided into three parts, the book explores race, poverty and spirituality in post-slavery Brazil where black farmers are forced into servitude and neoslavery. One of the sisters ends up leaving the community and becomes involved in the workers rights movement. The other sister stays behind and

The book has supernatural elements too, including Santa Rita the Fisherwoman, an ancient spirit who represents the collective memory of the land. There is a lot of vivid imagery in Crooked Plow-blood, soil, trees and plantation, cow dung etc, all which richly illustrate life in quilombo. The novel has won several literary prizes, and was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2024-rightly so!

Check out Crooked Plow from your local library or buy from an independent bookstore.