The Besieged City

Now in paperback, The Besieged City—Clarice Lispector’s electrifying third novel—tells of a shallow girl becoming a desirable but highly materialistic woman in a rough-and-ready town

Rich with visions, miraculous horses, and linguistic ecstasy, The Besieged City stars Lucrécia. Clarice Lispector’s heroine is a materialistic girl free of the burden of thought: “Behold, behold, all of her, terribly physical, one of the objects.”

“The object—the thing,” Lispector once remarked, “always fascinate...