Of Cattle and Men - Ana Paula Maia and Mother

and Mother

Desire moves like an undertow between them all

Mild Vertigo explores the dizzying reality of being unable to locate oneself in the endless stream of minutiae that forms a lonely life confined to a middle-class home

' So a boy's life begins in a winding river valley on the Polish-Russian border where time is measured by seasonal rhythms and ancient songs

Superbly translated by Sophie Hughes

Of Cattle and Men - Ana Paula Maia and MotherAnimals go mad and men die (accidentally and not) at a slaughterhouse in an impoverished, isolated corner of Brazil. In a landscape worthy of Cormac McCarthy, the river runs septic with blood. Edgar Wilson makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of a cow, then stuns it with a mallet. He does this over and over again, as the stun operator at Senhor Milos slaughterhouse: reliable, responsible, quietly dispatching cows and following orders, wherever