Books & the Arts / To understand the philosophical dimensions of her fiction you must read her 1961 novel The Apple in the Dark. Shaj Mathew Like dangerous talismans, Clarice Lispector’s novels ...

The first word of Clarice Lispector’s newly translated 1969 novel, “An Apprenticeship, or The Book of Pleasures,” is not a word at all, but a mark: a comma.

Clarice Lispector’s bizarre, challenging, and dazzling writing has become integral to the Brazilian literary canon, and has attracted a small but fierce cult following around the world.

Reading all 84 of Lispector’s stories also raises the question of whether she could have suffered from — or, perhaps, was blessed with — synesthesia, in which one sense is confused with another.

Ad Policy. Statue of Clarice Lispector at Leme Beach in Rio de Janeiro, 2016. (Photo by Luiz Souza / NurPhoto) Like dangerous talismans, Clarice Lispector’s novels stage unholy communions ...