Letters from a Seducer
Published on 22. May 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
128 pages
978-1-80533-138-4 (ISBN)
Description
In Letters from a Seducer, Hilst describes the everyday life of Karl, a wealthy, erudite, and amoral man who seeks an answer to his incomprehension of life through sex.
Karl writes and sends twenty provocative letters to Cordelia, his chaste sister. The letters' text becomes intertwined with the life of the poet Stamatius, who finds Karl's letters in the trash, as Hilst constructs an ingenious mirror play between the two that casts strange light on questions of amorality, sexuality and the spirit.
Linguistically rich and endlessly playful, Letters from a Seducer is a work of perverse genius by one of Brazil's greatest modern writers.
Karl writes and sends twenty provocative letters to Cordelia, his chaste sister. The letters' text becomes intertwined with the life of the poet Stamatius, who finds Karl's letters in the trash, as Hilst constructs an ingenious mirror play between the two that casts strange light on questions of amorality, sexuality and the spirit.
Linguistically rich and endlessly playful, Letters from a Seducer is a work of perverse genius by one of Brazil's greatest modern writers.
Reviews / Votes
She is a novelist with the fecundity and multivocality of Joyce, with the precision and wit of Sarraute, and yet she is something new under the sun, the poet of "friezes, strips, joyful bands, columbombastic screams." Maybe all women wonder what men would be like, without their posturing and wack, but it seems to me Hilst had more than an inkling -- Dodie Bellamy Letters of a Seducer seduces the reader with all the strategies available to a fine writer: wit, wonderfully inventive language lushly captured by the translator, an intriguing story-and did I say sexuality that broils and bubbles along at a mad and marvelous intensity? This is a brilliant performance! -- Samuel R. Delany Consider this your personal message of recommendation from me to you to read Hilda Hilst, as much as you can... Letters From a Seducer will make you blush, gasp, become aroused then feel weird about it, laugh a lot. After reading any Hilst your body and mind will make more and less sense to each other. Your verbal and sensorial understandings will alter, you'll slap your thigh and yell at the shock of a line, you'll feel drunk, ungodly and fantastically free. -- Holly Pester, author of 'The Lodgers' A modern master of disturbance... A joyfully wicked writer * TLS *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Pushkin Press
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 196 mm
Width: 133 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
119 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-80533-138-4 (9781805331384)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Hilda Hilst (1930-2004) was born in Jau, a small town in the state of Sao Paulo. She studied law at the University of Sao Paulo before dedicating herself to writing from 1954. She published novels, poetry and plays and won many prestigious literary prizes, gaining recognition as one of the most significant and controversial figures in Brazilian literature. The Obscene Madame D is also forthcoming from Pushkin Press.