Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer's Reviews > Of Cattle and Men

Winner of the 2024 Republic of Consciousness Prize



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.

“De Gados e Homens”, originally published in 2013 was very much in this tradition, following on from the trio of novellas in the Sago des Brutos series: Entre rinhas de cachorros e porcos (2009), O trabalho sujo des outros (2009) and carvão animal (2011) which were translated into English by Alexandra Joy Forman and published by Dalkey Archive - with this one more a standalone (if still rather short) novel.

It was then translated by Zoe Perry and published in English as “Of Cattle and Men” by the always excellent Charco Press in 2023.

In a Pen interview around this time, translated by Carolina Orloff, co-founded and co-owner of Charco Press, Ana Paula Maia spoke about the development of her writing style and her characters

For a few years now, I have been trying to write in a style that is more economical and more direct. And there’s a reason for that: the characters. My characters are direct and objective. They live lives free of subterfuge, without much choice, focusing just on what needs to be done. A construction of drawn-out reflexions filled with digressions would be out of place in a story where these characters are the centre.
And I think the brutalism of the book lies in the raw construction of the characters. Their fears, their intentions and their actions are apparent. There is no coating, no glossing that can hide who they really are. You understand who they are and what they are capable of.

The core character of this book is her recurring character Edgar Wilson – we are first told “since he’s stop working in the coal mines, the only job he could get was with cattle, but what he really wants to do is work with hogs”. His work in coal mines of course we know from his chapter-length cameo in “carvão animal” and the terrible underground explosion and fire with which he is involved and that novella ends with him aiming to “take a job offered to me some time ago, if it’s still open”, one slaughtering pigs. As an aside this story ends with him “heading west, to work with hogs” – which of course leads us to “Entre rinhas de cachorros e porcos” (that book in turn ending with him heading of in search of snow – the desire for which first comes to him in this book when his new colleague Santiago turns out to have worked in Iceland slaughtering reindeer and Edgar “for the first time …wanted to see snow”.

Although therefore the novel post-dates ““Entre rinhas de cachorros e porcos” in the Edgar Wilson timeline, I would say that both the writing and the character seeming much more mature and considered.

In terms of the writing – while there are a number of violent incidents and deaths, it is nothing like to the same density as on the pig farm.

In terms of character Edgar Wilson seems to have developed more of a philosophical and spiritual outlook on life – his slaughtering of the cattle accompanied by a ritualistic sign of the cross between their eyes and openly and calmly acknowledging under the confrontational questioning of a visiting student his own complicity as a murderer (a scene which is the book’s highlight).

And the book also takes a more surreal/enigmatic turn when the cows themselves start to act oddly (for example developing lemming like tendencies) and this adds further depth and nuance to the novel compared to the author’s earlier work.

Where I think the book is let down is that the central message (not just of the book but of much of the author’s writing) is spelt out a little too clunkily: in particular on the visit of the students Edgar Wilson confronts the woman back with “Have you ever eaten a hamburger …. And how do you think it got there”. There was also a rather bad taste (and unfortunately timed for publication) incident involving Lebanese and Israeli sheep and some yellow paint - both of which cost the book in my opinion.

Nevertheless an intriguing novel - rounded up from 3.5 * as it’s the culmination so far of the English translations of the author’s distinctive body of work - a Brazilian and brutalist, sometimes biblical version of Magnus Mills.