Description
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.
Reviews
"Both dazzling and difficult." — San Francisco Chronicle
"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
"One of 20th-century Brazil’s most intriguing and mystifying writers." — The L Magazine
"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
Also By: Clarice Lispector 
The Besieged City
Paperback, 2024
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
The Apple in the Dark
Paperback, 2023
“The best one,” as Clarice Lispector called The Apple in the Dark, her famously intense 1961 novel
The Woman Who Killed the Fish
Hardback, 2022
Four beguiling tales for children of all ages.
A surprising new facet of Clarice Lispector’s genius
Too Much of Life: The Complete Crônicas
Paperback, 2022
In the magnificent feast of Clarice Lispector’s books, her crônicas—short, intensely vivid newspaper pieces—are the delicious canapés
Too Much of Life: The Complete Crônicas
E Book, 2022
In the magnificent feast of Clarice Lispector’s books, her crônicas—short, intensely vivid newspaper pieces—are the delicious canapés
Also By: Johnny Lorenz
The Besieged City
Paperback, 2024
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
The Besieged City
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 Besieged City
E Book, 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
Also By: Benjamin Moser
Portraits in Life and Death
Hardback, 2024
A new edition of the cult classic photography book by the legendary Peter Hujar, featuring a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin MoserThe Besieged City
Paperback, 2024
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 townThe Apple in the Dark
Paperback, 2023
“The best one,” as Clarice Lispector called The Apple in the Dark, her famously intense 1961 novel
The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters
Hardback, 2023
A Washington Post Notable Book of 2023
Plunged into a strange land at twenty-five, Benjamin Moser began an obsessive, decades-long study of the Dutch Masters to set his world right again.The Woman Who Killed the Fish
Hardback, 2022
Four beguiling tales for children of all ages.
A surprising new facet of Clarice Lispector’s genius
