The Hour of the Star

Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macab a, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macab a loves movies, Coca-Colas, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid the realization that for all her outward misery, Macab a is inwardly free/She doesn't seem to know how unhappy she should be. Lispector employs her pathetic heroine against her urbane, empty narrator--edge of despair to edge of despair--and, working them like a pair of scissors, she cuts away the reader's preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love and the art of fiction. In her last book she takes readers close to the true mystery of life and leave us deep in Lispector territory indeed.


About the Author
Lispector, Clarice: - Clarice Lispector (1920-1977), the greatest Brazilian writer of the twentieth century, has been called "astounding" (Rachel Kushner), "a penetrating genius" (Donna Seaman, Booklist), and "one of the twentieth century's most mysterious writers" (Orhan Pamuk).Moser, Benjamin: - Benjamin Moser, the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, is the editor of ND's Clarice Lispector translation series, of which this is the ninth volume. For Sontag: Her Life and Work, he won the Pulitzer Prize.Tóibín, Colm: - Colm Toibin is currently the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman professor of the humanities at Columbia University and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester.