Near to the Wild Heart
Description
Near to the Wild Heart, published in Rio de Janeiro in 1943, introduced Brazil to what one writer called "Hurricane Clarice" a twenty-three-year-old girl who wrote her first book in a tiny rented room and then baptized it with a title taken from Joyce: "He was alone, unheeded, near to the wild heart of life."
The book was an unprecedented sensation -- the discovery of a genius. Narrative epiphanies and interior monologue frame the life of Joana, from her middle-class childhood through her unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence, when she proclaims: "I shall arise as strong and comely as a young colt."
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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 "a truly remarkable writer" (Jonathan Franzen). "Her images dazzle even when her meaning is most obscure," noted the Times Literary Supplement, "and when she is writing of what she despises, she is lucidity itself."
Australian translator Alison Entrekin has translated over forty books from the Portuguese, including the classics City of God by Paulo Lins, Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector, and My Sweet Orange Tree by José Mauro de Vasconcelos. In 2019, she was awarded the New South Wales Premier's Translation Prize and PEN medallion for the body of her work. Other honours include shortlistings for the 2004 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the 2012 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the 2013 PEN America Translation Prize. She teaches literary translation privately, and occasionally writes about translation (in Portuguese) at: https: //www.revistapessoa.com.
Reviews
A truly remarkable writer.--Jonathan Franzen
There's a feeling of encountering something completely new and classic at the same time.
Lispector is one of the hidden geniuses of twentieth century literature, in the same league as Flann O'Brien, Borges and Pessoa... utterly original and brilliant, haunting and disturbing.--Colm Tóibín
We now finally have a translation worthy of Clarice Lispector's inimitable style. Go out and buy it.-- (06/21/2012)
It is jarring and yet restorative to read a writer whose focus is so private, internal.-- (06/21/2012)
One of 20th-century Brazil's most intriguing and mystifying writers.-- (06/21/2012)
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?-- (06/14/2012)
