Four books for anyone who has ever found the experience of being a person considerably stranger than anyone seems willing to acknowledge.
Clarice Lispector is one of the twentieth century's most singular literary voices, a writer whose work moves between psychological fiction, philosophical inquiry and formal experimentation. Her characters are frequently caught in the midst of some apparently ordinary experience that becomes, without much warning, an existential catastrophe. A marriage, an empty room, a passing thought or an encounter with an insect can dismantle an entire understanding of the world.
This collection brings together four works spanning her literary career, from her remarkable debut at twenty-three to her final, posthumously published book.
Near to the Wild Heart (1943)
Lispector's extraordinary debut follows Joana from childhood into adulthood, tracing her restless intellectual and emotional development. Rejecting conventional chronology, the novel moves through memory, desire, marriage and solitude, introducing the fierce independence and psychological complexity that would define her work.
The Passion According to G.H. (1964)
A wealthy woman enters her maid's empty room, discovers a cockroach and undergoes a profoundly disturbing confrontation with everything she believes separates her from the rest of existence. A novel of disgust, revelation and the collapse of familiar distinctions between human and nonhuman life.
Água Viva (1973)
An experimental work written in the voice of an unnamed painter addressing an absent lover. Rather than developing a conventional plot, Lispector constructs a series of fragments concerned with artistic creation, music, time and the possibilities of expression. Perhaps her most uncompromising exploration of what literature can do beyond storytelling.
A Breath of Life (1978)
Lispector's final work takes the form of a dialogue between an Author and Angela Pralini, a character of his own invention. Their exchanges become increasingly unstable as Angela develops a voice and perspective that resist her creator's control. An extraordinary, often darkly funny examination of authorship, mortality and the relationship between an artist and their work.
Read together, these books offer a fascinating account of Lispector's development as a writer: from the interior life of a young woman to the dismantling of narrative itself. An excellent introduction for the curious, and a particularly satisfying collection for anyone already familiar with her work.
Edition/Condition: Four matching New Directions paperback editions. English translations by Alison Entrekin, Idra Novey, Stefan Tobler and Johnny Lorenz. Very good condition overall, with light shelf wear.
