Near to the Wild Heart

by Clarice Lispector, Alison Entrekin (Translator), Benjamin Moser (Preface by)

Overview

Clarice Lispector's first novel, Near to the Wild Heart, was published in 1944, when its author was only nineteen years old. An immediate success, it became an acknowledged watershed in Brazilian literature, catapulting it into the literary arena of European modernism. Narrative epiphanies and interior monologue consciously echo James Joyce as Lispector recalls first the childhood and then the adult years of the middle-class Joana, her unhappy marriage and its dissolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811220712
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	06/28/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	220
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Clarice Lispector (1920–1977), the greatest Brazilian writer of the twentieth century, has been called “astounding” (Rachel Kushner), “a penetrating genius” (Donna Seaman, Booklist), and “one of the twentieth century’s most mysterious writers” (Orhan Pamuk).
Alison Entrekin has translated a number of works by Brazilian and Portuguese authors into English, including City of God by Paulo Lins and Budapest by Chico Buarque.
General editor of the new translations of Clarice Lispector’s complete works at New Directions, BENJAMIN MOSER is the author of Why This World: The Biography of Clarice Lispector, and Sontag: Her Life and Work, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His new book, The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters, will be published in October.

What People are Saying About This

Colm Toibin

Lispector is one of the hidden geniuses of twentieth century literature, in the same league as Flann O’Brien, Borges and Pessoa…utterly original and brilliant, haunting and disturbing.

Jonathan Franzen

A truly remarkable writer.

Editorial Reviews

"I had a sort of missionary urge with her...but I started thinking, even when I was 19: How can I help this person reach the prominence she deserves?"

San Francisco Chronicle - Benjamin Moser

"You could breeze through it, you could let it marinate, or you could reread it twice in one sitting."

Vanity Fair

"Her images dazzle even when her meaning is most obscure, and when she is writing of what she despises she is lucidity itself."

The Times Literary Supplement

"We now finally have a translation worthy of Clarice Lispector's inimitable style. Go out and buy it."

The Guardian

"Lispector is one of the hidden geniuses of twentieth century literature, in the same league as Flann O’Brien, Borges and Pessoa… utterly original and brilliant, haunting and disturbing."

Colm Tóibín

"One of 20th-century Brazil’s most intriguing and mystifying writers."

The L Magazine

"There's a feeling of encountering something completely new and classic at the same time."

Time Out Chicago

"It is jarring and yet restorative to read a writer whose focus is so private, internal."

Boston Globe

"A truly remarkable writer."

Jonathan Franzen