On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia

On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula MaiaINTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED 2026On 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 prisons waning days, a new horror is unleashed: every full moon night, the inmates are released, the

interleaved with letters and other ephemera gathered from the archive

As the new regime takes on the old guard

Nii Ayikwei Parkes

From award-winning war reporter and co-author of I Am Malala

when the rains eventually return

In his eighty-eighth year

This portrait of an imperfect mother who strives to provide a good life for her child feels painfully relevant

But is this trope a romanticised myth

Ruth's other 'tribe' are the friends who gather at the cove in Greystones

In spellbinding linked narratives

whose hilltop manor contains a secret embarrassment of riches

bursting with life' Frank McGuinness