Clarice Lispector died of cancer at the age of fifty-six on 9th December 1977. The Hour of the Star was published that same year and acclaimed by the critics as ‘a regional allegory’ of extraordinary awareness and insight. Lispector herself defined The Hour of the Star as a book ‘made without words...a mute photograph...a silence...a question’. The tale of Macabéa can be read at different levels and lends itself to various interpretations. The book’s subtle interplay of fiction and philosophy sums up Lispector’s unique talent as a writer and her lasting influence on contemporary Brazilian writing.


`Macabéa is one of the great antiheroines of modern fiction... the literary discovery of the decade.' - Vogue

'Clarice Lispector is a Brazilian writer, and for me she is thegreatest writer of the twentieth century. I rank her with Kafka...her work will become a model of "feminine writing".' - Helene Cixous

‘Her recurring theme is the fragility of peace and order, and the swarming of temptations in unlikely places. She would have understood (and perhaps did) Brecht’s phrase about the terrible temptation of goodness’. - Arthur Marwick, London Review of Books