The Besieged City
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
Seven decades after its original publication, Clarice Lispector’s third novel—the story of a girl and the city her gaze reveals—is in English at last
Seven decades after its original publication, Clarice Lispector’s third novel—the story of a girl and the city her gaze reveals—is in English at last. Lucrécia Neves is ready to marry. Her suitors—soldierly Felipe, pensive Perseu, dependable Mateus—are attracted to her tawdry not-quite-beauty, which is of a piece with Sao Geraldo, the rough-and-ready township she inhabits. Civilization is on its way to this place, where wild horses still roam. As Lucrécia is tamed by marriage, Sao Geraldo gradually expels its horses; and as the town strives for the highest attainment it can conceive—a viaduct—it takes on the progressively more metropolitan manners that Lucrécia, with her vulgar ambitions, desires too. Yet it is precisely through this woman’s superficiality—her identification with the porcelain knickknacks in her mother’s parlor—that Clarice Lispector creates a profound and enigmatic meditation on “the mystery of the thing.” Written in Europe shortly after Clarice Lispector’s own marriage, The Besieged City is a proving ground for the intricate language and the radical ideas that characterize one of her century’s greatest writers—and an ironic ode to the magnetism of the material.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lispector's singular 1949 novel, newly translated by Lorenz, unfolds as a series of narrative snapshots taken over the life of a woman. In the quaint township of Sao Geraldo, sometime in the 1920s, young Lucrecia Neves enjoys a tumultuous festival in the company of an aggressive would-be suitor, Lieutenant Felipe. She attends a festive ball, avoids Felipe's attempted kiss, and shares her boredom and restlessness with her stubborn mother, Ana. But mostly, she describes the world around her in evocative detail. After the festive evening, Lucrecia sleeps "like a candle." The township, not so much; "ants, rats, wasps, pink bats, herds of mares emerged sleepwalking from the sewers." Lucrecia later finds love with the courtly and wealthy Matteo Correia, who lavishly indulges her. As she transitions from eligible ing nue to settled married lady, Lucrecia continues to be intensely attuned to her environment. Her health is not what it should be. She observes the patrolling of the local lighthouse, a spider industriously spins a web in her window and, accompanied by the solicitous Doctor Lucas, takes a long constitutional, feeling a strong connection to the land. And life goes on. Lispector's novel offers a pristine view of an ordinary life, told in her forceful, one-of-a-kind voice that captures isolated moments with poetic intensity.
