The Besieged City (Penguin Modern Classics)

One of the hidden geniuses of the twentieth century Colm TóibínShe suddenly leaned toward the mirror and sought the loveliest way to see herselfLucrécia Neves is vain unreflective insolently superficial almost mute. She may have no inner life at all. As she morphs from small-town girl to worldly wife of a rich man and her small home town surrenders to the forces of progress Lucrécia seeks perfection: to be an object serene smooth beyond the burden of words or even thought itself. A book that obsessed its author The Besieged City is unlike any other work in Lispectors canon: a story of transformation of what it means to see and to be seen. About the Author Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian novelist and short-story writer. Her innovation in fiction brought her international renown. She was born in the Ukraine in 1920 but in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Civil War the family fled to Romania and eventually Brazil. She published her first novelNear to the Wildheart in 1943 when she was just twenty-three and the next year was awarded the Graça Aranha Prize for the best first novel. She died in 1977 shortly after the publication of her final novelThe Hour of the Star.