Writer Padma Viswanathan’s English translation of Ana Paula Maia’s On Earth As It Is Beneath has been shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize.
Set on a remote Brazilian penal colony built over a site of historical enslavement atrocities, the novella depicts the prison’s final days. Deranged warden Melquíades unleashes monthly full-moon hunts, releasing inmates into the jungle for armed guards to pursue amid forced labor and systemic brutality.
On inspiration for translation Padma says in an interview, “An early seed was Lakshmi Holmstrom’s anthology of Indian women’s writing, The Inner Courtyard, which includes stories both originally written in English and translated from South Asian languages, implying a fluidity between those categories that felt right to me.”
“”I acquired it in 1991, six years before Salman Rushdie, whom I worship (Midnight’s Children made me see how and why I wanted to write), wrote in The New Yorker that Indian writers were creating ‘stronger and more important’ work in English than in the 18 recognised languages of India.”
Judges praised its “brutal, haunting and hypnotic” portrayal of institutional cruelty. The £50,000 winner will be revealed May 19 at London’s Tate Modern.
On Earth As It Is Beneath by Brazilian writer Ana Paula Maia is a novella in Portuguese set in a remote Brazilian penal colony built on land once used to torture enslaved people. Decades later, as the failing prison winds down operations, its deranged warden Melquíades unleashes a horrific ritual every full moon: inmates are released into the wilderness, armed guards hunt them down, and survival hinges on outrunning familiar foes or unseen jungle perils.
The story centers on the colony’s final days with only a few prisoners left, including hitman Bronco Gil, who killed a mayor and now navigates brutal prison life. Warden Melquíades, obsessed with hunting, slaughters inmates during these monthly chases to maintain his escape-free record, burying them on-site amid a history of violence from indigenous massacres to slavery.
Maia’s stark prose explores institutional cruelty, moral decay, and fragile humanity in a claustrophobic world of surveillance, forced labor, and ambient brutality, where guards and prisoners alike erode under the system’s weight. Brief acts of connection pierce the dehumanization, questioning dignity amid engineered erasure.
