Clarice Lispector

The Besieged City, Clarice Lispector's revelatory third novel, is now available in English for the first time. Written in flight from Lispector's 'shipwreck of introspection', it is a book unlike any other in the Lispector canon, a novel focused on the simple act of seeing the external world. Its heroine, Lucrecia, is utterly mute and unreflective, possibly devoid of any...

A sensational and mystical novel from one of the 20th century's greatest modernist writers. A Breath of Life is Clarice Lispector's final novel, "written in agony," which she did not live to see published. Sensual and mysterious, it is a mystical dialogue between a god-like author and the creation he breathes life into—the speaking, shifting, indefinable Angela Pralini. As he...

A boundary-breaking, riveting romance narrative from the seminal Brazilian writer, Clarice Lispector. A lonely woman in Rio de Janeiro makes a connection that will change her life. Ulisses, a mysterious man, has penetrated her soul and turned her inside out. An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures is a devastating novel of the interior, of a woman yearning to love,...

Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady offers tales of desire and madness from this giant of Brazilian literature. "The morning became a long, drawn-out afternoon that became depthless night dawning innocently through the house."

'The best one', as Clarice herself described it – her great mystical masterpiece. In the mistaken belief that he has killed his wife, Martim flees the city and arrives, in a state of both fear and wonder, at a remote ranch. There, he will have to remake himself, emerging from the beast-like state in which his crime has plunged him,...

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas, and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. The small incidents of life become moments of inner revelation in the luminous writing of Clarice Lispector. A woman contemplating a vase of roses after a nervous breakdown; a tangled mother-daughter relationship; a man's abandonment of...

Major new collection of Clarice Lispector's short stories for the first time in English. The publication of Clarice Lispector's Complete Stories, eighty-five in all, is a major literary event. Now, for the first time in English, are all the stories that made her a Brazilian legend— from teenagers coming into awareness of their sexual and artistic powers to humdrum housewives...

Available in English for the first time, The Chandelier is one of Lispector's most radical books and a key part of what made her a Brazilian legend. 'She found the best clay that one could desire- white, supple, sticky, cold ... She would get a clear and tender material from which she could shape a world' Like the clay from...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books 'One of the hidden geniuses of the twentieth century' - Colm Tóibín A housewife's life is shattered by a sudden epiphany. A simple tale of killing cockroaches fragments into multiple narratives, each uncovering new truths. In this selection of haunting short stories, Lispector reveals the permeable boundaries between past and present,...

"That woman who killed the fish unfortunately is me," begins the title story, but "if it were my fault, I'd own up to you, since I don't lie to boys and girls. I only lie sometimes to a certain type of grownup because there's no other way." Enumerating all the animals she's loved—cats, dogs, lizards, chickens, monkeys—Clarice finally asks: "Do...

A disoriented and confused young woman looks back on her life and her place in the world. New to Penguin Modern Classics. The Passion According to G.H., a well-to-do Rio sculptress, enters the room of her maid, which is as clear and white 'as in an insane asylum from which dangerous objects have been removed'. There she sees a cockroach—black,...

A masterly work of art, which rearranges language and plays in the gaps between reality and fiction. In Agua Viva, Clarice Lispector aims to 'capture the present'. Her direct, confessional, and unfiltered meditations on everything from life and time to perfume and sleep are strange and hypnotic in their emotional power. This remarkable work has been a huge influence on...

This exhilarating collection of non-fiction sees one of the greatest twentieth-century writers meditating on the small moments that make up a life. How did I so unwittingly transform the joy of living into the great luxury of being alive? Between 1967 and 1977, Clarice Lispector wrote weekly dispatches from her desk in Rio for the Jornal do Brasil. Already famous...

Clarice Lispector's audacious and haunting last novel, new to Penguin Modern Classics. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a living as a typist, Macabea loves movies, Coca-Cola and her philandering rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly and unloved. Yet telling her story is the narrator Rodrigo S.M.,...

A glance, a tram, a man chewing gum—and suddenly nothing holds. In this luminous story, Clarice Lispector captures the instant when the ordinary breaks open and the self no longer feels secure. What emerges is not drama but revelation: a world at once more alive and more unbearable.

A chatty rabbit dares you to solve how he keeps escaping his hutch in this whimsical detective story perfect for reading aloud with animal lovers ages 5 to 9. When Joãozinho the rabbit scrunches his nose 15,000 times, he finally comes up with an escape plan! A chatty rabbit dares you to solve how he keeps escaping his hutch in...