Crooked Plow

Itamar Vieira Junior

Book 1 of Trilogia da Terra

This literary novel follows two Afro-Brazilian sisters, Bibiana and Belonísia, who grow up as tenant farmers in Brazil's rural Bahia region and whose lives are forever marked by a childhood accident involving an old family knife. Told across three narrators—including, in its final section, a spiritual presence—the story traces the family's struggles against generations of exploitation on the land their ancestors once worked as enslaved people. It blends folkloric, magical-realist elements with unflinching social realism to examine poverty, resistance, and the long legacy of slavery in Brazil's backlands.