Bury Your Dead
Ana Paula Maia author Padma Viswanathan translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Charco Press
Publishing:11th Aug '26
£11.99
This title is due to be published on 11th August, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
By the International Booker Prize Shortlisted Author of On Earth As It Is Beneath
Edgar Wilson has a gruesome job, one he is entirely unsentimental about—he cleans up roadkill in rural Brazil. But one day vultures are circling in the woods, and he can’t not go see what they’re gathering for. What transpires is a quest—a miserable day-long journey—for a couple of poor working men who only want to acknowledge that everybody (and in this case, every literal body) has the right to be treated as more than just scrap or trash. Dead animals, defrocked priests, corpses abandoned in the woods, and a criminal outfit trafficking in body parts—Bury Your Dead is an exhortation, a road trip, a story of friendship, and a hymn to the small ways we can shape the world. Ana Paula Maia’s alchemy with the grimmest of ingredients makes this her more hopeful, generous novel yet.
"Not from the soul, nor from the heart. Ana Paula Maia’s characters suffer from the liver." —O Estado de S. Paulo
"One must possess a profound understanding of fiction, of reality, and of the representation of reality to be able to write like this." —O Globo
"Amid the most repugnant manoeuvres, Ana Paula Maia discovers the mythic tone of a biblical curse, cloaked beneath the pop sensibilities of the surface." —Rolling Stone Brazil
**********
Praise for Ana Paula Maia
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
************
International Booker Prize (Longlist)
Republic of Consciousness Prize US (Longlist)
English PEN Translates Award
São Paulo Prize for Literature (Winner)
"Beautiful and gripping... a must read for those who like their poetry written in blood." —New York Times
"On Earth As It Is Beneath is a stark, unsettling exploration of power, violence, destruction and institutional corruption that will linger with readers long after the final page." —Booker Prize Judges
"Maia has delivered a masterclass in suspense and allegory." —Morning Star
"A thinking person’s sociological thriller that is also somehow a sort of fable, as tough to endure as it is to put down." —Southwest Review
"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
************
ISBN: 9781917260343
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
128 pages