Reading guide: On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia, translated by Padma Viswanathan

On 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, a selection of 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. 

On Earth As It Is Beneath was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2026. 

Ana Paula Maia was born in Nova Iguaçu, Brazil. She is an author and scriptwriter and has published seven novels, including O habitante das falhas subterráneas (2003), De gados e homens (2013), and the trilogy A saga dos brutos, comprising Entre rinhas de cachorros e porcos abatidos (2009), O trabalho sujo dos outros (2009) and Carvão animal (2011). Her books have been published in translation in Germany, Argentina, France, Italy, Serbia, the United States and Spain.  

She is also the author of many short stories that appear in anthologies and which have been translated into languages including German, Croat, Spanish, English and Italian. Her novel A guerra dos bastardos (2007) won praise in Germany as among the best foreign detective fiction. As a scriptwriter she has worked on a wide range of projects for television, cinema and theatre.  

She has won the Prêmio São Paulo de Literatura: Melhor Romance do Ano prize two years in a row: in 2018 for her novel Assim na Terra como embaixo da Terra, and in 2019 for Enterre Seus Mortos. 

‘Set in a remote penal colony built on land scarred by slavery and colonialism, this vivid and haunting novel unfolds in a landscape where punishment has replaced justice and cruelty has become the norm. As the colony nears its end, the warden introduces a ritualised full-moon hunt, releasing prisoners into the forest for sport.  

‘Through spare yet masterful prose, Ana Paula Maia renders a closed world thick with dread, brutality and moral decay. The prisoners and guards alike are trapped within a system that corrodes and suffocates everyone it touches. On Earth As It Is Beneath is a stark, unsettling exploration of power, violence, destruction and institutional corruption that will linger with readers long after the final page.’

‘I write stories that reflect man’s relationship with work, and how performing certain daily tasks affects and shapes his worldview, and builds his character and opinions. This structure is part of all my books, and in the case of On Earth As It Is Beneath specifically, the confined space in which convicted criminals receive a second sentence was challenging… 

‘I wanted to talk about the prison system. Not to judge it, but to try and get a deeper understanding of it. It took me about seven months to write this book. I did a lot of research reading newspapers articles, public statements, and so forth, but more than anything else, I spent a lot of time reflecting about it all.’ 

Read the full interview

The prison warden Melquíades is a frightening presence throughout; his behaviour violent and unpredictable – he may even have been driven insane. What did you make of him as a character and why do you think he has come to behave in this way?  

The prisoners all wear electronic tags attached to their ankles, believing them to be bombs that will explode if they go beyond the prison colony’s walls. Why are these tags important and what do you think they symbolise?  

In a review in The Hindu, Vasudevan Mukunth writes: ‘The text is guided by Maia’s female authorial gaze that strips the hyper-masculine colony of its traditional patriarchal glamour. Male authors writing about male prisons or violent outlaws often romanticise the “tough guy”, but Maia refuses to validate the violence.’ Would you agree that Maia’s female lens brings something different to this story of a male-only environment and the dark side of masculinity?  

At one point, Taborda tells Heitor, a visitor from the justice department, ‘Whenever we dig a hole in the ground, we usually find others buried. All that’s left are bones with ropes tied around the wrists and ankles. There are more men underneath than up here, that’s for sure.’ At another moment, a coffin filled with children’s bones is discovered. What do you think is the significance of the bodies buried on the site of the prison, and how does what’s buried underground relate to the horrors on the surface? 

Ana Paula Maia’s work has been compared to that of Cormac McCarthy in its depiction of bleak landscapes and humanity’s capacity for violence. If you are familiar with McCarthy’s work, do you see similarities between the two authors? 

In an interview with the Booker Prizes, translator Padma Viswanathan described the vocabulary in the novel as ‘straitened and incantatory, a constant reminder of the men’s confinement and the way the penal colony bears the past’s unreconciled atrocities into the present’. What did you think of the language and use of repetition in the novel? In what ways do they feed into an atmosphere of dread and entrapment? 

The judges said that ‘Bronco Gil is perhaps the most memorable presence in the novel: a quiet, intimidating figure whose past is marked by violence, yet who occasionally reveals moments of unexpected tenderness. That tension between brutality and vulnerability makes him strangely human and deeply compelling, and we root for him despite his past.’ What did you think of Bronco Gil and how his character develops? By the end of the book, do you feel hopeful for his future? 

Author Ana Paula Maia said in an interview with the Booker Prizes, ‘The more I reflected on the prison system in Brazil and other parts of the world, the more I realised that beyond the application of laws to criminals, in the end, we are all imprisoned in this world, with walls that may or may not be visible.’ What do you think she means by this and do you agree?