Lispector’s final novel follows Macabéa, a poor young typist living in Rio de Janeiro, but the book is equally about the man attempting to write her.

Rodrigo S.M. is Lispector's cultivated narrator who keeps interrupting the story to question his motives, his language and his right to turn another person’s deprivation into literature. Macabéa barely registers within the social world, yet Lispector refuses to make her poverty either picturesque or morally clarifying. The novel instead asks what it means to represent a life that the writer cannot fully know without also consuming it.

Originally published in Portuguese in 1977, shortly before Lispector’s death, The Hour of the Star is one of her most accessible books and one of her most formally treacherous. Its apparent simplicity keeps breaking open into philosophy, comedy and self-accusation; even the narrator’s compassion is contaminated by vanity. Benjamin Moser’s translation preserves that instability, making this a strong entry point into Lispector for readers interested in consciousness, class, authorship and the violence hidden inside acts of attention. 

New copy, retail price $45. New Directions centenary hardback, first ed, fourth printing, translated from the Portuguese by Benjamin Moser.