Crooked Plow

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In the novel "The Tongue in Her Hand" by Maria Isabel de Lizandra, two sisters discover an ancient knife and use it to commit a violent act, which changes their lives and binds them together. The book is praised as a masterpiece and a significant work of Brazilian literature, exploring themes of family, spirituality, slavery, and political struggle.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 27 June 2023
Publisher: Verso Books

Shortlisted for The International Booker Prize 2024


I heard our grandmother asking what we were doing. Say something! she demanded, threatening to tear out our tongues. Little did she know that one of us was holding her tongue in her hand.


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, as well as political struggle.

Weight: 238g
Dimension: 129 x 198 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781839766404