Crooked Plow
Itamar Vieira Junior's novel follows the Afro-Brazilian sisters Bibiana and Belonisia, who as children find a hidden knife belonging to their grandmother and suffer a violent accident that binds them for life. The story is set on the Agua Negra plantation in the backlands of Bahia, where their family works the land as tenant farmers under a system that descends from slavery. Vieira Junior moves between the sisters' inner lives, the rhythms of agricultural labor, the Afro-Brazilian Jarê religion practiced by their father, and the slow stirring of organized resistance against the landowners. The book draws on the author's work as a federal land agent and his research into quilombola and tenant communities in the Brazilian interior. Translated from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz, the novel was shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize.
What you might want to know about Crooked Plow
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Two sisters in rural Bahia carry a childhood accident into adulthoods shaped by tenant farming, faith, and resistance.
Yes. Cowen named it his favorite novel of 2024 on Marginal Revolution, highlighting its Bahian setting and its treatment of rural Brazilian life.
It is fiction, but Vieira Junior worked as a federal land agent and drew on quilombola and tenant farming communities in the Brazilian interior.
Crooked Plow was written by Itamar Vieira Junior, published in 2023 by Verso.
Crooked Plow is 276 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Crooked Plow takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Crooked Plow is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.