Clarice Lispector

On 10 December 1920, Clarice Lispector was born, and she would go on to become a major figure of 20th century literature. Born in a village in Ukraine, she was given the name "Haia", which means "life" in Hebrew. Amid civil war and the persecution of the Jewish community (the pogroms), the family decided to emigrate: in 1922, Clarice Lispector arrived in the north-east of Brazil with her parents and two sisters. They changed their names and began a new life.

In 1939, Clarice Lispector went to study Law in Rio de Janeiro. The following year she began working as a journalist and published her first short story in a magazine. She never stopped writing. Near to the Wild Heart, her debut novel, came out in 1943, the year she married a Brazilian diplomat, a fellow student. Ten years later the novel was published in France, with a cover by Henri Matisse, launching a dazzling international career.

From 1944, Clarice Lispector lived in Naples, Bern, Torquay and Washington, following her husband's diplomatic career. She returned to Brazil in 1959, after the divorce. She died in 1977, in Rio de Janeiro.

Written over almost four decades, some twenty books of fiction (novels and short stories), several volumes of chronicles, letters and articles, and five children's books by Clarice Lispector have been published in Brazil. The author of a body of work of incomparable importance, published in Portugal from 2025 by Companhia das Letras and taken up by the most prestigious publishers around the world, Clarice Lispector is an icon of literature.