A Breath of Life

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Clarice Lispector

New Directions, New York, 2012, English; originally published 1978 in Portuguese

Nonfiction, General

ISBN: 9780811219624

From the Publisher. 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 a friend, 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.

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Peter Mendelsund

On Peter Mendelsund’s Current Reading list

— March 2013.

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