Near to the Wild Heart (excerpt) (Electric Literature's Recommended Reading Book 1)

"Leaning her forehead against the cold and shiny windowpane she gazed at the neighbor’s yard, at the big world of the hens-that-didn’t-know-they-were-going-to-die."

This week's story, an excerpt from "Near to the Wild Heart," showcases the intellect and vitality that earned Clarice Lispector the name "Hurricane Clarice." Originally published in 1943, this new translation from New Directions shows how relevant her work remains. In his introduction, editor Benjamin Moser recalls the critial reception of Lispector's sensational debut: "'The whole book,' critics wrote, 'is a miracle of balance, perfectly engineered,' combining the 'intellectual lucidity of the characters of Dostoevsky with the purity of a child.'” 

Author Bio: Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) was a Brazilian journalist, translator and author of fiction. Born in Western Ukraine into a Jewish family who suffered greatly during the pogroms of the Russian Civil War, she was still an infant when her family fled the disastrous post-World War I situation for Rio de Janiero. At twenty-three, she became famous for her novel, Near to the Wild Heart, and married a Brazilian diplomat. She spent much of the forties and fifties in Europe and the United States, helping soldiers in a military hospital in Naples during World War II and writing, before leaving her husband and returning to Rio in 1959. Back home, she completed several novels including The Passion According to G.H. and The Hour of the Star before her death in 1977 from ovarian cancer.

Translator Bio: Alison Entrekin has previously translated City of God by Paulo Lins and Budapest by Chico Buarque.

About Recommended Reading:
Great authors inspire us. But what about the stories that inspire them? Recommended Reading, the latest project from Electric Literature, publishes one story every week, each chosen by a great author or editor. In this age of distraction, we uncover writing that's worth slowing down and spending some time with. And in doing so, we help give great writers, literary magazines, and independent presses the recognition (and readership) they deserve.

About this week's guest editor:
New Directions was founded in 1936, when James Laughlin (1914 - 1997), then a twenty-two-year-old Harvard sophomore, issued the first of the New Directions anthologies. "I asked Ezra Pound for 'career advice,'" James Laughlin recalled. "He had been seeing my poems for months and had ruled them hopeless. He urged me to finish Harvard and then do 'something' useful."