Near to the Wild Heart

Clarice Lispector’s sensational, prize-winning debut novel Near to the Wild Heart was published when she was twenty-three and earned her the name ‘Hurricane Clarice’. She became renowned as Brazil’s greatest twentieth-century writer.

The novel tells the story of Joana, from her wild, creative childhood, as the ‘little egg’ who writes poems for her father, through her marriage to the faithless Otavio and on to her decision to make her own way in the world. As Joana, endlessly mutable, moves through different emotional states, different inner lives and different truths, this impressionistic, dreamlike and fiercely intelligent novel asks if any of us ever really know who we are.

Translated by Alison Entrekin.

Preface by Benjamin Moser.