Crooked Plow
Aoife’s Review:
Staying in Latin America, ‘Crooked Plow’ is a piece of magical realism which follows two sisters whose lives and identities become forever entwined in the aftermath of a violent incident with a mysterious dagger.
The book examines the oppression and marginalization of Afro-Brazilian peoples, incorporating elements of the community’s spiritual beliefs and folklore, securing it one of the top spots on my summer reading list.
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.
