On Earth as It Is Beneath

By: Maia, Ana Paula

INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE LONGLISTED 2026On land where enslaved people were once tortured and murdered, the state built a penal colony in the wilderness, where inmates could be rehabilitated, but never escape. Now, decades later, and having only succeeded in trapping men, not changing them for the better, its operations are winding down. But in the prison's waning days, a new horror is unleashed: every full-moon night, the inmates are released, the warden is armed with rifles, and the hunt begins. Every man plans his escape, not knowing if his end will come at the hands of a familiar face, or from the unknown dangers beyond the prison walls. Ana Paula Maia has once again delivered a bracing vision of our potential for violence, and our collective failure to account for the consequences of our social and political action, or inaction. No crime is committed out of view for this novelist, and her raw, brutal power enlists us all as witness.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1917260105
• ISBN13: 9781917260107
• Release Date: August 2025
• Publisher: Charco Press
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.9" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Remarkable novel!

Maia’s prose delivers terror, brutality, hopelessness, and transcendence. The novel, set in a forgotten penal colony in the Brazilian outback, is brutal. The prose, however, is light and incisive, eschewing gore (which is easy enough for readers to imagine). The story is almost mythic in simplicity; the characters are human, yet iconic. The beautiful and spare prose highlights this quality. In a short novella, Maia has beautifully contained volumes of depth.