By Isaac Norris – 24 February, 2021

Itamar Vieira Júnior is a writer from Brazil’s north-eastern state of Bahia. His multi awardwinning debut novel Torto Arado (Crooked Plough) is a beautifully written tour de force that unflinchingly gives a voice to the country’s silenced Black, Indigenous and Quilombola communities who have been fighting for their land rights for hundreds of years. ‘Quilombolas’ is the name for residents of Quilombos: settlements originally formed by fugitive slaves. There are roughly 3,000 Quilombos in Brazil today.

Vieira Júnior is a writer who has experienced first-hand many of the themes explored in Torto Arado. Over the past 15 years, he has worked for Brazil’s land reform agency INCRA (National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform), which led him to live intimately with the Quilombola communities depicted in the novel, getting to know their stories, rituals and struggles.

The novel has been making waves on the literary scene both at home and abroad, and it is very deserving of the many accolades it has won. When Torto Arado was first published in Portugal in 2018, it won the LeYa Prize, Portugal’s most prestigious literary prize. And in 2020, Vieira Júnior won two awards: he received a Jabuti Prize, the most traditional and prestigious literary prize in Brazil; and the Oceanos Prize, one of the most important literary prizes for books in the Portuguese language. 

Source: https://soundsandcolours.com/articles/brazil/torto-arado-by-itamar-vieira-junior-the-fight-for-land-rights-in-brazils-northeast-58417. [Adapted].

According to text 5, it is correct to say that:

01. the first paragraph brings information about the book content and the author.

02. the review shows the name of the book publisher.

04. the third paragraph explains how the book has been translated.

08. it provides information about how to buy the book.

16. the book review focuses on the book characters.

32. the second paragraph explains how the writer’s professional experience inspired the book.