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 ...

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.

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 ...

By Clarice Lispector, translated from the Portuguese by Katrina Dodson, edited and introduced by Benjamin Moser. New Directions, 640 pp., $28.95. Rachel Shteir is the author of three books.

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.