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Saga of Brutes
Saga of Brutes draws together three confronting and darkly comic “Between Dog Fights and Hog Slaughter,” “The Dirty Work of Others,” and “ carbo animalis ,” published in one volume for the first time. Ana Paula Maia’s no-holds barred narrative pulls few punches, describing a shocking reality of the lives of the invisible workingmen who, like Atlas, are forced to carry society’s burdens. These heroes of vile circumstance―coal miners, firemen, garbage collectors, crematorium workers―are the soot-covered supermen who risk their lives performing difficult and dangerous work for others. But in the end, they, too, amount to nothing but carbo animalis―notwithstanding the impure relation of coal to diamonds. Despite their straightforwardness, Ana Paula Maia’s stories are filled with great insight and compassion for the lives of the men who live on the edge of a society built with their own sweat.
- GenresFiction
300 pages, Paperback
Published November 9, 2016
About the author
Ana Paula Maia
24 books206 followersAna Paula Maia (Nova Iguaçu, 1977) is a Brazilian writer, scriptwriter and musician.
During her adolescence she player at a punk rock band and studied piano. As a scriptwriter she took part in the script of the short film O entregador de pizza (2001), and along with Mauro Santa Cecilia and Ricardo Petraglia, she wrote the theatrical monologue O rei dos escombros assembled in 2003 by the Moacyr Chaves firm. She published her first novel under the title O habitante das falhas subterrâneas in 2003.
She is the author of the trilogy A saga dos brutos, started by the short novel Entre rinhas de cachorros e porcos abatidos y O trabalho sujo dos outros —published in one volume— and concluded by the novel Carvão animal.
Influenced by Dostoievski, by Quentin Tarantino and Sergio Leone in her cinematography, and the pulp literature and series, her works are maked by the violence and the treatment of their characters, that often includes scatological elements.
During her adolescence she player at a punk rock band and studied piano. As a scriptwriter she took part in the script of the short film O entregador de pizza (2001), and along with Mauro Santa Cecilia and Ricardo Petraglia, she wrote the theatrical monologue O rei dos escombros assembled in 2003 by the Moacyr Chaves firm. She published her first novel under the title O habitante das falhas subterrâneas in 2003.
She is the author of the trilogy A saga dos brutos, started by the short novel Entre rinhas de cachorros e porcos abatidos y O trabalho sujo dos outros —published in one volume— and concluded by the novel Carvão animal.
Influenced by Dostoievski, by Quentin Tarantino and Sergio Leone in her cinematography, and the pulp literature and series, her works are maked by the violence and the treatment of their characters, that often includes scatological elements.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 30, 2016
A harsh look at the disposable people disposing of our disposable things (garbage, animals, human organs, teeth, fingers, children, the dead, grease, family, memories).
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March 28, 2017This book was featured in the Nota Benes section of the March 2017 issue of World Literature Today Magazine.
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August 15, 2022
A very good book
December 14, 2023
He doesn't consider the wretched landfill scavengers, who could also benefit from the better trash. He just doesn't care.
Just as those above him don't care. In the diminishing scale from starving to degenerate, he occupies a place just above miserable.
Missing it just by a hair, same as being grazed by a bullet.
Erasmo Wagner picks up more than twenty tons of garbage on his daily route. Measures the wealth of a society by the amount of trash it produces. And his is a fairly short route, so he thinks about how much money goes into what ends up being thrown out. Everything transforms into trash; even he himself is trash to the many people, rats, and vultures that constantly peck at him.
The Brazilian Ana Paula Maia is a city-suburb dwelling, female author but her clear preference in writing is for county-based, male, working class characters. In particular she writes about those working in professions on the edge of society, doing jobs necessary to middle and upper class living but ones which are not just hidden from that society, but the brutal reality of which is deliberately and willfully not contemplated, what the back cover of the Dalkey Archive edition (in poetic language which I am not clear if is translated) calls them “heroes of vile circumstance ……… forced to carry society’s burdens”.
The effect is something like a Brazilian and brutalist, sometimes biblical version of Magnus Mills.
Translated by Alexandra Joy Forman (possibly a little unevenly – as some passages did not seem to read entirely logically) this novella was published in “Saga of Brutes” was published by Dalkey Archives in 2016 as a collection of three strongly linked novellas.
In Brazil Sago des Brutos #1 (Entre rinhas de cachorros e porcos) and #2 (O trabalho sujo des outros) were originally published together in 2009; with #3 (carvão animal) following in 2011.
My reviews of the first and third of these are here
Between Dog Fights and Hog Slaughter
carbo animalis
Maia’s writing features as a recurring character Edgar Wilson (apparently based after one of her inspirations Edgar Allan Poe’s and his story “William Wilson”) – but all her books appear to feature similar everyman type characters with initials EW (which may as well serve as “ewww” given much of the material covered – although these books are designed to get a much more visceral reaction than that).
Here / in the second novella - “The Dirty Works of Others” we have Erasmo Wagner – working as a trash collector (from the novella’s last sentence – “he’ll continue collecting the garbage of others, like a beat of burden, sterile, hybrid, unquestioning”) and we also learn of his brother who operates a jackhammer on a road crew – Erasmo Wagner’s previous job – and of his cousin who works in sewerage.
Wagner himself is an ex-prisoner, convicted for the murder of a man who abused his younger brother and then killed his parents – and in prison taught himself to be “attentive to imminent fatality” and learnt not to search for meaning or love in life – making him perfectly suited to his role as someone who cleans up the trash that society produces – a role whose importance is seen when the trash truck drivers stage a strike.
Overall this is a short novella, one where the violence and brutality seems less gratuituous and dominant than “Between Dog Fights and Hog Slaughter”.
June 29, 2024
Three outstanding novellas that vaguely overlap by a mega-talented Brazilian author. Highly recommended for fans of violent, unflinching, and existential literary fiction. The kind that offers a fleeting but unmistakable halo of redemption. Beautiful, bold, and brilliant.
October 9, 2023
This novella collection has a fitting title. Maia’s writing is frank, cinematic, and harsh.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews