On Earth As It Is Beneath

On land once used to torture and kill enslaved people, the state built a remote penal colony meant to rehabilitate inmates who could never escape. Decades on—having caged men without changing them—the prison is winding down, but in its final days a new horror begins: on every full-moon night a handful of inmates are set loose, the warden takes up his rifles, and the hunt begins. Each man plots his survival, never knowing whether his end will come from a familiar face or from the wilderness beyond the walls. A spare, brutal novel from one of Brazil's foremost writers, shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize.