Clarice Lispector 
The Chandelier 

In paperback, Clarice Lispector’s explosive and surprising second novel

The Chandelier, written when Lispector was only twenty-three, reveals a very different author from the college student whose debut novel,
Near to the Wild Heart, announced the landfall of “Hurricane Clarice.”

Virginia and her cruel, beautiful brother, Daniel, grow up in a decaying country mansion. They leave for the city, but the change of locale leaves Virginia’s internal life unperturbed. In intensely poetic language, Lispector conducts a stratigraphic excavation of Virginia’s thoughts, revealing the drama of Clarice’s lifelong quest to discover “the nucleus made of a single instant”—and displaying a new face of this great writer, blazing with the vitality of youth.

About the author

General editor of the new translations of Clarice Lispector’s complete works at New Directions, BENJAMIN MOSER is the author of Why This World: The Biography of Clarice Lispector, and Sontag: Her Life and Work,  which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His new book, The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters, will be published in October.