A Breath of Life

by Clarice Lispector, Johnny Lorenz (Translator), Benjamin Moser (Preface by)

Overview

A mystical dialogue between a male author and his creation, this posthumous work has never before been translated, and is a book of particular beauty and strangeness.

A mystical dialogue between a male author (a thinly disguised Clarice Lispector) and his/her creation, a woman named Angela, this posthumous work has never before been translated. Lispector did not even live to see it published.

At her death, a mountain of fragments remained to be “structured” by Olga Borelli. These fragments form a dialogue between a god-like author who infuses the breath of life into his creation: the speaking, breathing, dying creation herself, Angela Pralini. The work’s almost occult appeal arises from the perception that if Angela dies, Clarice will have to die as well. And she did.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811219624
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	06/13/2012
Series:	New Directions Books
Pages:	220
Sales rank:	313,326
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

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).

Johnny Lorenz, son of Brazilian immigrants to the United States, was born in 1972. He received his doctorate in English from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000, and he is an associate professor at Montclair State University. In 2013, he was a finalist for Best Translated Book for his translation of A Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector (New Directions). His book of original poems, Education by Windows, was published in 2018 by Poets & Traitors Press; it includes his translations of the poet Mario Quintana, for which he received a Fulbright grant. He has published articles on Brazilian literature in journals such as Luso-Brazilian Review and Modern Fiction Studies. He is also the translator of Lispector's The Besieged City (New Directions).

Benjamin Moser, the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, is the editor of ND’s Clarice Lispector translation series, of which this is the ninth volume. For Sontag: Her Life and Work, he won the Pulitzer Prize.

What People are Saying About This

Orhan Pamuk

One of the twentieth century’s most mysterious writers in all her vibrant colors.

Editorial Reviews

Starred Review.

One in a series of four new translations, this is the first time this posthumous book from one of Brazil's most renowned writers has been translated into English. The novel is a lyrical and expertly rendered schizoid duet comprising the exchanges between the "Author" (a male approximation of Lispector) and Angela Pralini, a textual manifestation of his "dark" "interior dialogue" whom he loves yet simultaneously wants to destroy. Because the Author cannot clearly define Angela, or separate her from himself-much like Lispector (Água Viva) cannot separate herself from the Author-the novel does not progress in a traditional sense. Rather, the Author admits that "What this book is missing is a bang. A scandal-" something to put Angela on a trajectory other than that of her creator. As the two wrestle with the conditions of their relationship, they each offer transcendent insights into the writing process, the artifice of character creation, the morbid, and the absurd, as when the Author laments being "objectified" as a writer, and Angela asks entreatingly, "But does anyone hear me?" While the innovative nature of the work will likely appeal to fans of Beckett, Lispector's intoxicating prose makes this experimental dialogue special.
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Publishers Weekly

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

The L Magazine

"The raw, demanding pace and the dialogic form of A Breath of Life provoke an urgent meditation on life, self, and time. In fact, reading this novel may be a form of meditation."

Full Stop

"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?"

Benjamin Moser - San Francisco Chronicle

"Both dazzling and difficult."

San Francisco Chronicle

Both dazzling and difficult.

San Francisco Chronicle

Reading Lispector is an intellectual adventure... Serious writing is a dangerous business, and unlike any other author, Lispector is willing to embrace the danger and come out the other side of the void.

The Coffin Factory

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

One of the twentieth century’s most mysterious writers in all her vibrant colors.

Orhan Pamuk

Both dazzling and difficult.

SFGate

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