Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector, born Chaya Pinkhasivna Lispector, was a Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist and short story writer whose distinctive and innovative works, exploring diverse narrative forms and themes of intimacy and introspection, earned her international acclaim. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in western Ukraine, she moved to Brazil as an infant amid pogroms committed during the Russian Civil War, and she catapulted to fame at twenty three with her first novel, Near to the Wild Heart (1943), written as an interior monologue in a style considered revolutionary in Brazil. She is also known for The Hour of the Star (1977), and the American writer Benjamin Moser, editor of her anthology The Complete Stories, has described her as the most important Jewish writer in the world since Franz Kafka.