Why This World
Price:
$29.95 (02)Description
"That rare person who looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf," Clarice Lispector is one of the most popular but least understood of Latin American writers. Now, after years of research on three continents, drawing on previously unknown manuscripts and dozens of interviews, Benjamin Moser demonstrates how Lispector's art was directly connected to her turbulent life. Born amidst the horrors of post-World War I Ukraine, Clarice's beauty, genius, and eccentricity intrigued Brazil virtually from her adolescence. Why This World tells how this precocious girl, through long exile abroad and difficult personal struggles, matured into a great writer, and asserts, for the first time, the deep roots in the Jewish mystical tradition that make her both the heir to Kafka and the unlikely author of "perhaps the greatest spiritual autobiography of the twentieth century." From Ukraine to Recife, from Naples and Berne to Washington and Rio de Janeiro, Why This World shows how Clarice Lispector transformed one woman's struggles into a universally resonant art.Reviews
"Lively, ardent and intellectually rigorous."-The New York Times Book Review
"Why This World treats Clarice and her many mysteries very gently. Moser carefully unwraps the very raw, intimate character behind her very introspective booksnull. An excellent feat of portraiture "--Los Angeles Times
"This is rich biographical material that gets only richer as Mr. Moser, a translator and a book critic for Harper's Magazine , begins to unpeel the layers of her complicated life. "Why This World" sucks you into its subject's stange vortex."--he New York Times
"Benjamin Moser's Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
uncovers the iconic author's double life: the diplomat's wife in war-shattered Europe and the elusive genius who dramatized a fractured interior world in rich synthetic prose . . . her work lives on, still
striking near to the wild heart."--Megan O'Grady, Vogue
"[A] Pioneering biography of Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (1920-1977). This well-researched biography by Moser, New Books columnist for Harper's , should send readers in search of this indescribable author."--Publishers Weekly
"Beautifully rendered... Moser's richly contextualized, uniquely insightful, and haunting biography of mystic and writer Lispector resurrects a "penetrating genius"." --Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
"A smart, passionate portrait of a truly remarkable writer. Lispector is a great subject, and Moser is the perfect biographer for her."-- Jonathan Franzen
"A biography worthy of its great subject ... One of the twentieth century's most mysterious writers is finally revealed in all her vibrant colors."-- Orhan Pamuk
"Rich in detail and original research and filled with sympathy for what must remain hidden and what must be understood. [Moser] has written a great book about a Jewish heroine whose family lived through some of the worst episodes of the last century in Europe; he has given also a fascinating account of modern Brazil where Lispector's work is treasured and her genius recognized." --Colm Toibin
"Benjamin Moser has recreated all the psychological and cultural context needed to understand this great writer, and brought to life her essentially tragic nature in all its complexity." --Edmund White
"In Ben Moser, [Lispector] has found a gifted young biographer, social historian, and prose stylist who is able to take her elusive measure. This book is enthralling."--Judith Thurman
"Elegantly written, carefully researched, [Moser's] complex and nuanced biography allows Lispector her essential mystery."--The New Leader
"[An] absorbing and perceptive biography of a fascinating writer."--The Economist
"A good introduction to an author worth knowing about."--Library Journal
"Comprehensive, inspired, respectful of necessary silences Why This World does what Lispector set as a goal for her own writing: to leave unexplained what cannot be explained."--Forward.com
"A comprehensive portrait."--TexasMonthly.com
"In his stimulating new work, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector , Houston native Benjamin Moser recounts the extraordinary life story of a woman who is a legend in her beloved Brazil but barely known, much less read, in the United States. She is, Moser convincingly argues, unique-in Brazilian or any other literature."--Houston Chronicle
"The attraction of a life story bouncing so wildly between the antipodes of high and low culture is obvious. However, while there have been a plethora of books, movies and TV shows about Lispector and her novels in Brazil, she has never made her mark in the United States. So the American publishing world must be a bit bemused that "Why This World," Benjamin Moser's recent biography of Lispector, has received more attention in major review outlets--The New York Times , the New York Review of Books , Texas Monthly , etc.--than has been given to the whole of her works translated into English."--Austin American-Statesman
"Lispector lived a large, glamorous and difficult life, which Benjamin Moser evokes in expressive detail, against a finely constructed historic and political backdrop. The biographer dives into the philosophical and theological concerns of his subject's literary output without skimping on the travails, pleasures and idiosyncrasies of her everyday life."--Moment
About the Author(s)
Benjamin Moser is the New Books columnist for Harper's and regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and Conde Nast Traveler . He lives in the Netherlands.
