The Hour of the Star
Published on 28. February 1992
Book
Paperback/Softback
96 pages
978-0-8112-1190-1 (ISBN)
Description
Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabea, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabea loves movies, Coca-Colas, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid the realization that for all her outward misery, Macabea is inwardly free/She doesn't seem to know how unhappy she should be. 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 and the art of fiction. In her last book she takes readers close to the true mystery of life and leave us deep in Lispector territory indeed.
Reviews / Votes
"Clarice Lispector is the premier Latin American woman prose writer of this century. She is studied by the scholars, but has never managed to reach the reading public. The Hour of the Star could change all that." -- The New York Times "An artist of vivid imagination. If her work is thoughtful and poetic, distinguished by touching insight and human sympathy, it is also full of irony and wild humor." -- Saturday Review "In less than one hundred pages, Clarice Lispector tells a brilliantly multi-faceted and searing story." -- Jesse Larsen - 500 Great Books by WomenMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 132 mm
Thickness: 8 mm
Weight
109 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8112-1190-1 (9780811211901)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
New editions
Clarice Lispector
The Hour of the Star
Book
10/2012
2nd Edition
New Directions Publishing Corporation
€13.50
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Persons
Clarice Lispector (1920-1977), the greatest Brazilian writer of the twentieth century, has been called "astounding" (Rachel Kushner), "a penetrating genius" (Donna Seaman, Booklist), and "one of the twentieth century's most mysterious writers" (Orhan Pamuk). Giovanni Pontiero (1932-1996) was the ablest translator of twentieth century literature in Portuguese and one of its most ardent advocates. He was the principal translator into English of the works of Jose Saramago and was awarded the Teixeira-Gomes Prize for his translation of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.