Of Cattle and Men (2024) by Ana Paula Maia

 Book Review

Of Cattle and Men (2024)

by Ana Paula Maia

Translated from the Portuguese by Zoe Perry

   Of Cattle and Men by Brazilian author Ana Paula Maia can accurately be described as "Cormac McCarthy x The Jungle by Upton Sinclair in Brazil.   It's another example of a book that got a big push in the UK but was released without a PR campaign campaign in the US, which is how I came to check out the eBook from the LAPL.  Of Cattle and Men is only 99 pages long and it is a brisk 99 pages, with a narrator who barely scratches the surface of what we might call conscious thought.  He is in his own way, a hero, though, as the McCarthy references should augur, a flawed one.   You just have time to get settled into this bleak universe when the book ends.

   This book was published in Brazil in 2013- another example of the lag between an author publishing in her native language and getting any kind of attention in translation.  Maia is also another example of the South American brutalist trend, which crosses genres and nations but universally addresses the various traumas of modernity as experienced by modern South Americans.  It's one of my favorite things going these days.  I'd identify Tender is the Flesh (2017) by Augustina Bazterrica as the leading example.  

  The whole book is set in a slaughterhouse so, trigger warning if you cringe at detailed written description of meat processing.