Mata Doce
by Luciany Aparecida
Alfaguara 2023
296 pages
15×23 cm
A lyrical, impactful portrait of a majority-Black community led by brave women in the fictional village of Mata Doce, this novel tells the story of Maria Teresa, who, after suffering a huge loss, starts working in cattle killing, a job traditionally done by men.
Mata Doce is a place where many things have happened. It all began with two women – strong and respected in their small village in rural Bahia – who adopted a little girl named Maria Teresa. Maria Teresa will live many lives, all of them in the same village, a place filled with magic, roses and pain.
After being adopted, she has the chance to study, learn how to read and write, find a job and even a good boy to marry, Zezito… But on the day before the wedding, Zezito is murdered with a shot to the back. The murderer, Colonel Gerônimo Amâncio, killed him due to old rivalries with Zezito’s family.
After this terrible event, Maria Teresa will find the strength to move on. She
will change her name and her life, and will start working for the very same man who murdered her husband, killing oxen at his livestock fazenda. While becoming more and more an important figure in the slaughterhouse and in the Colonel’s farm, she will turn her back to the past, and will become known with the moniker of Filinha Mata-Boi, The Ox-Killing Girl.
Around her, a whole world of people, connections and violence has grown, and she tells us all about it at the age of 92. Now, alone in her house, she finally has a clear view on everything that has happened, and through her eyes we can see a sample of human life at its best and worst.
Memory and present come together in this story of loss and hope, where we meet various important fgures of Mata Doce, and their destinies amidst unrestrained violence. Aparecida’s writing, jumping from first to third person and from past to present, is a powerful means for the reader to find themselves immersed in this reality, which is as strongly connected to daily life as it is to prophecies and magic, with the chants and the hand of the Orishas always present and felt.
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Press:
«Mata Doce is a ghost story—or, better yet, the story of what and who lives within us. Or it’s the opposite: a story about life in all its brutal workings. Mata Doce is also the home of brave, obstinate woman, able to write their own story despite the old power holders. With magnetic prose, Luciany Aparecida gives life to great characters, such as Filinha Mata-Boi, her mothers Tuninha and Mariinha, and Mané da Gaita, writing a novel about a simultaneously loving and violent Brazil, a Brazil going from Maria Firmina dos Reis’s Úrsula to typewritten letters to recipients who will never get them. Mata Doce is a novel, but it’s also a happening.»
Micheliny Verunschk
«Between brutality and finesse, Luciany Aparecida builds a world on loss, grief, and affection. Through a haunting narrative, featuring solid, deep characters, Mata Doce offers us the best there is in contemporary Brazilian literature.»
Jeferson Tenório
Rights available in all territories
Represented in collaboration with MTS Agência
Luciany Aparecida (Vale do Rio Jiquiriçá, Bahia) is the author of Macala (2022, Luna Parque/Fósforo) and Joanna Mina (2022, Paralelo13S). Under the name Ruth Ducaso, she has published Florim (2020) and Contos ordinários de melancolia (2017), both with the imprint Paralelo13S. This is Aparecida’s first novel under her own name.
* For any info about Luciany Aparecida’s other publications please contact us at info@redondobooks.com *
