The Hour of the Star

A new translation of The Hour of the Star by Lispector’s biographer Benjamin Moser reveals the mesmerizing force of the revitalized modernist’s Rio-set tale of a young naïf, who, along with the piquantly intrusive narrator, challenges the reader’s notions of identity, storytelling, & love. — Megan O’Grady, Vogue.comThe Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector’s consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece. Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, & haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life’s unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio & eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Cola, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly, & unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, & yet he cannot avoid the realization that for all her outward misery, Macabéa is inwardly free. She doesn’t seem to know how unhappy she should be. As Macabéa heads toward her absurd death, Lispector employs her pathetic heroine against her urbane, empty narrator—edge of despair to edge of despair—and, working them like a pair of scissors, she cuts away the reader’s preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love, & the art of fiction. In her last book she takes readers close to the true mystery of life & leaves us deep in Lispector territory indeed.°°° Clarice Lispector (1920–1977), the greatest Brazilian writer of the 20th century, has been called “astounding” (Rachel Kushner), “a penetrating genius” (Donna Seaman, Booklist), & “one of the twentieth century’s most mysterious writers” (Orhan Pamuk).Benjamin Moser is the editor & a translator of Clarice Lispector's works into English for New Directions. He also is the author of an award-winning biography of Lispector. Overview:Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) was Brazilian journalist, translator and author of fiction. Born in Western Ukraine into a Jewish family who suffered greatly during the pogroms of the Russian Civil War, she was still an infant when her family fled the disastrous post-World War I situation for Rio de Janiero. At twenty-three, she became famous for her novel, Near to the Wild Heart, and married a Brazilian diplomat. She spent much of the forties and fifties in Europe and the United States, helping soldiers in a military hospital in Naples during World War II and writing, before leaving her husband and returning to Rio in 1959. Back home, she completed several novels including The Passion According to G.H. and The Hour of the Star before her death in 1977 from ovarian cancer.