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3.5 

The Besieged City

By Clarice Lispector & Benjamin Moser &
The Besieged City by Clarice Lispector & Benjamin Moser &  digital book - Fable

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Publisher Description

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

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. Lucrécia Neves is ready to marry. Her suitors—soldierly Felipe, pensive Perseu, dependable Mateus—are attracted to her tawdry not-quite-beauty, which is of a piece with São Geraldo, the rough-and-ready township she inhabits. Civilization is on its way to this place, where wild horses still roam. As Lucrécia is tamed by marriage, São Geraldo gradually expels its horses; and as the town strives for the highest attainment it can conceive—a viaduct—it takes on the progressively more metropolitan manners that Lucrécia, with her vulgar ambitions, desires too. Yet it is precisely through this woman’s superficiality—her identification with the porcelain knickknacks in her mother’s parlor—that Clarice Lispector creates a profound and enigmatic meditation on “the mystery of the thing.” Written in Europe shortly after Clarice Lispector’s own marriage, The Besieged City is a proving ground for the intricate language and the radical ideas that characterize one of her century’s greatest writers—and an ironic ode to the magnetism of the material.

15 Reviews

3.5
“"-she, waiting down through the centuries, decrepit and a child, for him to heed at last the plea of the waves over the rocks and, leaping over the tallest escarpment of the night, unleash a howl, the long neigh with which he'd respond to the beauty and perdition of this world: who hadn't seen on windless nights how cruel and murderous the silver flowers were?"”
Thinking Face“MY FIRST LET DOWN FROM HER 😭🥲 I already re read it cause I don't think I gave it a fair and square ratings BUT after read it the second time it still... idk how to say it, but it's just not hit the same as other lispector's work. A lot of people would say this book was hard too read but it's a different case for me. Cause I get it but I don't GET it yk. It sucks to see people can see through this book, cause I can't, maybe this isn't for me. I'm just in a denial. I don't understand what I don't get(?) cause I love the surreal dreamlike setting and I don't hate the main character, in fact I can relate to her at times but... i still don't get it.. 😮‍💨 for every five star reviewer, what part of this book that I'm missing about?”
“not my favorite lispector, but that’s not saying much since i still absolutely loved every second of the existential dread”

Benjamin Moser

General editor of the new translations of Clarice Lispector’s complete works at New Directions, BENJAMIN MOSER is the author of Why This World: The Biography of Clarice Lispector, and Sontag: Her Life and Work, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His new book, The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters, will be published in October.

Johnny Lorenz

Johnny Lorenz, son of Brazilian immigrants to the United States, was born in 1972. He received his doctorate in English from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000, and he is an associate professor at Montclair State University. In 2013, he was a finalist for Best Translated Book for his translation of A Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector (New Directions). His book of original poems, Education by Windows, was published in 2018 by Poets & Traitors Press; it includes his translations of the poet Mario Quintana, for which he received a Fulbright grant. He has published articles on Brazilian literature in journals such as Luso-Brazilian Review and Modern Fiction Studies. He is also the translator of Lispector's The Besieged City (New Directions).

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