Crooked Plow
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Deep in Brazil’s neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother’s bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever. Heralded as a new masterpiece and the most important Brazilian novel of this century, this fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in the Brazil’s poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery in that country is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath and political struggle.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Johnny
Lorenz
Johnny Lorenz is a poet, translator of Brazilian literature, literary critic and professor of English at Montclair State University. His translation of Clarice Lispector’s A Breath of Life was a finalist for Best Translated Book Award. His translation of Lispector’s The Besieged City was listed as one of the “Best Books of 2019” by Vanity Fair. His honors include a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, a Fulbright, and, most recently, an NEA grant to support his translation of the award-winning novel Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior. Lorenz’s book of poems, Education by Windows, was published by Poets & Traitors Press.
Johnny Lorenz is a poet, translator of Brazilian literature, literary critic and professor of English at Montclair State University. His translation of Clarice Lispector’s A Breath of Life was a finalist for Best Translated Book Award. His translation of Lispector’s The Besieged City was listed as one of the “Best Books of 2019” by Vanity Fair. His honors include a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, a Fulbright, and, most recently, an NEA grant to support his translation of the award-winning novel Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior. Lorenz’s book of poems, Education by Windows, was published by Poets & Traitors Press.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
The first novel by the Brazilian author Itamar Vieira Junior, Crooked Plow , is a complex and captivating story about daily life in a Brazilian Rural community. Throughout a well balanced narrative, the book offers a unique perspective on the close relationship between two sisters, that captivates the reader’s attention from the first pages. Crooked Plow is divided into three parts represented by three diferente narrators. A major event, triggered by the natural curiosity of childhood, will change the course of the life of the main characters. Therefore, the reader will be driven by the two sisters into the wider understanding of the community they live in.