The Time of the Star

One of the defining features of Clarice Lispector’s writing is the way she incorporates the fleeting and volatile into a literary work in a state of perpetual reinvention. The Hour of the Star  emerges in collision with the writer’s other fictions, introducing Rodrigo, a writer, and Macabéa, a destitute typist living in a rented room in Rio de Janeiro. It is Rodrigo who tells Macabéa’s story, a woman upon whom all misfortunes descend: orphaned and plain, ill-adapted to the city, she fills her idle time listening to the radio, alone. Rodrigo, the frivolous cosmopolitan, secretly envies the inner freedom of the wretched Macabéa.

Published shortly before Clarice Lispector’s death in 1977, The Hour of the Star has become, in recent decades, one of her most beloved novels. It is here that the writer reveals the engine of her creative restlessness and approaches, disarmingly, the mystery of life and death, bidding farewell to the world with a meteoric, eccentric, and universal work of art.

“Clarice understands that the portrait of humanity is complex and inherently contradictory, favouring an insight that ultimately broadens our perception of how much remains in the dark. […] The Hour of the Star is Clarice’s last book. Here, the writer creates a duet of characters for whom death is drawing near, which precipitates a more fiercely contested engagement with life. Writing at death’s door, even in fiction, is a dangerous negotiation, because every sentence becomes a final opportunity. […] Clarice’s miracle is that her writing remains inexpressive in the face of revelation.”
Valter Hugo Mãe