Clarice Lispector was born in the Ukraine in 1925, and was brought up in Receife, Brazil and then Rio de Janeiro. After graduating from the Faculty of Law she married and then published her first novel, Near to the Wild Heart. Her husband's diplomatic career took them to Europe and to the United States. Lispector's gifts as a Portuguese language writer were early recognised in The Hour of the Star, Family Ties (stories), The Foreign Legion (miscellany) and her journalistic essays Discovering the World. She died of cancer in 1977.