Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector was born in 1920 to a Jewish family in western Ukraine. As a result of the anti-Semitic violence they endured, the family fled to Brazil in 1922, and Clarice Lispector grew up in Recife. Following the death of her mother when Clarice was nine, she moved to Rio de Janeiro with her father and two sisters, and she went on to study law. With her husband, who worked for the foreign service, she lived in Italy, Switzerland, England, and the United States, until they separated and she returned to Rio in 1959; she died there in 1977. Since her death, Clarice Lispector has earned universal recognition as Brazil’s greatest modern writer. New Directions publishes eighteen of her books.

Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector was born in 1920 to a Jewish family in western Ukraine. As a result of the anti-Semitic violence they endured, the family fled to Brazil in 1922, and Clarice Lispector grew up in Recife. Following the death of her mother when Clarice was nine, she moved to Rio de Janeiro with her father and two sisters, and she went on to study law. With her husband, who worked for the foreign service, she lived in Italy, Switzerland, England, and the United States, until they separated and she returned to Rio in 1959; she died there in 1977. Since her death, Clarice Lispector has earned universal recognition as Brazil’s greatest modern writer. New Directions publishes eighteen of her books.

Books by Clarice Lispector

  • Near to the Wild Heart

    Clarice Lispector, Alison Entrekin, Benjamin Moser

    Paperback, 2012

    This new translation of Clarice Lispector's sensational first book tells the story of a middle class woman's life from childhood through an unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence.
  • Água Viva

    Clarice Lispector, Stefan Tobler, Benjamin Moser

    Paperback, 2012

    Lispector at her most philosophically radical.
  • A Breath of Life

    Clarice Lispector, Johnny Lorenz, Benjamin Moser

    Paperback, 2012

    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.
  • The Passion According to G.H.

    Clarice Lispector, Caetano Veloso, Idra Novey

    Paperback, 2012

    Lispector’s most shocking novel.
  • Complete Stories

    Clarice Lispector, Katrina Dodson, Benjamin Moser

    Paperback, 2018

    One of the most phenomenally acclaimed and successful books of recent years is now available as a paperback—with three just-discovered stories
  • The Besieged City

    Clarice Lispector, Benjamin Moser, Johnny Lorenz

    Hardback, 2019

    Seven decades after its original publication, Clarice Lispector’s third novel—the story of a girl and the city her gaze reveals—is in English at last
  • The Chandelier

    Clarice Lispector, Magdalena Edwards, Benjamin Moser

    Paperback, 2019

    In paperback, Clarice Lispector’s explosive and surprising second novel
  • The Hour of the Star: 100th Anniversary Edition

    Clarice Lispector, Benjamin Moser, Paulo Gurgel Valente, Colm Tóibín

    Hardback, 2020

    Clarice Lispector’s best-selling masterpiece—“her finest book” (The Nation)—now in a special hardcover edition to celebrate the centenary of her birth, with an illuminating new afterword by her son...
  • An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures

    Clarice Lispector, Stefan Tobler, Sheila Heti, Benjamin Moser

    Hardback, 2021

    A love story by the great Clarice Lispector that asks: Just how might two people be joined?
  • The Passion According to G.H.

    Clarice Lispector, Caetano Veloso, Idra Novey

    E Book, 2012

    Lispector’s most shocking novel.