Author Guide · Brazilian Fiction
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The translator Gregory Rabassa said Clarice Lispector looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf. She was born Chaya Lispector on 10 December 1920 in Chechelnyk, in present-day Ukraine, and reached Brazil in early 1922 with her Jewish family, who were escaping violence and poverty. She wrote her first novel in a rented room in 1942, at 23, and it won the Graça Aranha Prize. Fifteen years as a diplomat’s wife followed, in Naples, Bern and Washington, before she came back to Rio de Janeiro with her two sons in 1959. She died there of ovarian cancer on 9 December 1977, a day before her 57th birthday, in the year she published The Hour of the Star. This guide covers her 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1943–1978 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Clarice Lispector published nine novels and seven story collections. Her best-known books are The Hour of the Star (1977), The Passion According to G.H. (1964), Family Ties (1960) and Água Viva (1973). Start with The Hour of the Star: it is short, it has a plot, and it shows the narrator-on-the-page method the other books build on.
Where to Start with Clarice Lispector
If you want her most famous book
→ The Hour of the Star (1977) — under 100 pages, and the easiest way in.
If you want her short stories
→ Family Ties (1960) — 13 stories, winner of the 1961 Jabuti Prize.
If you want her most radical novel
→ The Passion According to G.H. (1964) — one morning, one room, one cockroach.
If you want to see where she began
→ Near to the Wild Heart (1943) — the 1943 debut that made her name.
12 Clarice Lispector Books, in Order
Near to the Wild Heart
Joana, a girl who has lost her mother, grows up into a woman who refuses to be made smaller, and whose husband leaves her for a pregnant mistress. Lispector wrote it between March and November 1942; the critic Antonio Candido welcomed it as “a novel that was needed”. English translation by Alison Entrekin (2012).
The Chandelier
Her second novel follows Virgínia and her close bond with her brother Daniel, from childhood in the country to life in the city. She wrote it in Europe and finished it in Naples at the end of the Second World War. It first appeared in English in 2018, translated by Benjamin Moser and Magdalena Edwards.
The Besieged City
Set in the 1920s in São Geraldo, a suburb turning into a town, the novel centres on the young Lucrécia Neves, who looks at the world rather than thinking about it.
Family Ties
Thirteen stories in which ordinary domestic moments crack open: a woman on a tram sees a blind man chewing gum in “Love”, a housewife fights to stay “normal” in “The Imitation of the Rose”. It won the Jabuti Prize in 1961, and all its stories are in The Complete Stories (2015).
The Apple in the Dark
Martim, who believes he has killed his wife, flees into the Brazilian interior and takes work on a remote farm run by a woman named Vitória. It won the Carmen Dolores Barbosa Prize. Gregory Rabassa translated it in 1967; Benjamin Moser’s new translation followed in 2023.
The Passion According to G.H.
A well-off sculptor in Rio, known only as G.H., goes into the empty room of the maid who has just left her, crushes a cockroach in the wardrobe door and falls into a spiritual crisis that ends in the book’s notorious final scene. The whole novel covers a single morning. Idra Novey translated it in 2012.
The Foreign Legion
Published the same year as G.H., it gathers stories that take apart clichés about friendship, solidarity and old age, together with short prose pieces she called “the bottom of the drawer”. The stories are included in The Complete Stories.
An Apprenticeship
Loreley, called Lóri, takes a job as a primary school teacher in Rio and falls for Ulisses, a philosophy professor and the novel follows her slow learning to love him. It won the Golfinho de Ouro Prize in 1969.
Água Viva
A woman who paints writes to an unnamed “you” in short, plotless fragments about time, flowers, music and death. Lispector cut it down from a much longer manuscript she called “Objeto gritante” (“Screaming Object”). Translated by Stefan Tobler (2012).
The Via Crucis of the Body
Stories written to order for her publisher, on the brief that they be erotic. The collection, with its English secretary, ageing women and a pregnant virgin, was controversial in Brazil; Lispector explains the commission in a short preface.
The Hour of the Star
The narrator, a writer called Rodrigo S.M., tries to tell the story of Macabéa, a poor and unwanted typist from Alagoas living in a tenement in Rio. She is left by her boyfriend Olímpico for her colleague Glória, visits a fortune teller who promises her a rich foreigner, and is hit by a Mercedes as she leaves. Suzana Amaral’s 1985 film won Marcélia Cartaxo the Silver Bear for Best Actress in Berlin.
A Breath of Life
A male author argues with Angela, the character he has created, about life, death and writing. Lispector worked on it for her last three years; her friend Olga Borelli assembled it from the pages and it was published after her death. Johnny Lorenz’s 2012 translation was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award.
In What Order to Read Clarice Lispector
Nothing carries over from one Lispector book to the next, so you do not need to read in order. Publication order does show a clear shift: the early novels are long and lyrical, the middle books (Family Ties, G.H.) strip the plot down to one moment, and the late books break narrative apart altogether.
Most readers do best by starting late and short, with The Hour of the Star, then moving to the stories, and leaving Água Viva and A Breath of Life until they know her voice. The 85 stories in The Complete Stories (2015) cover the stories from Family Ties, The Foreign Legion and The Via Crucis of the Body in one volume.
A reading path
1. The Hour of the Star (1977)
2. Family Ties (1960)
3. Near to the Wild Heart (1943)
4. The Passion According to G.H. (1964)
5. Água Viva (1973)
Everything Else Clarice Lispector Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 9 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other short story collections
4
4 books · 1952–1974
- 1952Some StoriesAlguns contos, her first collection
- 1971Covert JoyFelicidade clandestina, short stories of childhood and small moments
- 1973The Imitation of the RoseA imitação da rosa, a selection
- 1974Where You Were at NightOnde estivestes de noite, dreamlike and hybrid stories
Children’s books
2
2 books · 1967–1968
- 1967The Mystery of the Thinking RabbitO mistério do coelho pensante
- 1968The Woman Who Killed the FishA mulher que matou os peixes
Crônicas and collected editions
3
3 books · 1984–2022
- 1984The Discovery of the Worldher Jornal do Brasil columns, 1967–1973
- 2015The Complete Stories85 stories, translated by Katrina Dodson; PEN Translation Prize 2016
- 2022Too Much of Lifethe complete crônicas in English
The years · 1920–2016
Quick facts about Clarice Lispector
- Known for
- Clarice Lispector is known for intense, inward fiction in Portuguese that turns small moments, such as a woman looking at a cockroach, into crises of consciousness.
- 1920
- Born Chaya Lispector in Chechelnyk
- 1959
- Returns to Rio after 15 years abroad
- 1977
- The Hour of the Star; dies in Rio
- 2016
- The Complete Stories wins the PEN Translation Prize
- Born
- 10 December 1920, Chechelnyk, Podolia (now Ukraine), as Chaya Lispector
- Family
- Jewish; emigrated to Brazil in 1922 and lived in Maceió and Recife before moving to Rio in 1935
- Married
- The diplomat Maury Gurgel Valente, 1943–1959; two sons
- Abroad
- Naples, Bern, Torquay and Washington, 1944–1959
- Journalism
- Weekly crônica in Jornal do Brasil, 1967–1973
- Died
- 9 December 1977, Rio de Janeiro, of ovarian cancer
The red mark is 1977: The Hour of the Star, her most famous book, published the year she died.
How Clarice Lispector Writes: Plot Reduced to a Moment
Lispector’s stories hang on almost nothing happening. In “Love” a woman sees a blind man chewing gum from a tram; in The Passion According to G.H. a woman crushes a cockroach in a wardrobe door and the rest of the book takes place inside her head during one morning. The event is a trigger for a long, uneasy look at what it means to be alive.
Her narrators are often visibly at work on the page. In The Hour of the Star the writer Rodrigo S.M. keeps interrupting Macabéa’s story to talk about how hard it is to tell; in A Breath of Life an author quarrels with his own character. Her late books drop plot almost entirely: Água Viva is a sequence of fragments addressed to a “you”, cut down from a far longer manuscript.
Her Portuguese is deliberately odd, with unusual word order and punctuation, which is why translators disagree about how much to smooth it. Since 2012 New Directions and Penguin Modern Classics have published her in new English translations, overseen by her biographer Benjamin Moser, whose Why This World (2009) brought her to a wider English-language audience.
Watch
Clarice Lispector in São Paulo, 1977
Clarice Lispector is interviewed in São Paulo in 1977, in Portuguese with English subtitles. From the official Penguin Books UK channel.
Frequently asked questions about Clarice Lispector’s books
How many books has Clarice Lispector written?
Nine novels, one of them posthumous, and seven short story collections, plus children’s books and newspaper crônicas. This page covers her 12 key books, from Near to the Wild Heart (1943) to A Breath of Life (1978), and lists the rest below.
What are Clarice Lispector’s books in order?
Near to the Wild Heart (1943), The Chandelier (1946), The Besieged City (1949), Family Ties (1960), The Apple in the Dark (1961), The Passion According to G.H. (1964), The Foreign Legion (1964), An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures (1969), Água Viva (1973), The Via Crucis of the Body (1974), The Hour of the Star (1977) and A Breath of Life (1978).
Where should I start with Clarice Lispector?
The Hour of the Star (1977). It is short, it has a clear story, and the narrator who keeps interrupting it introduces the way she writes. If you prefer stories, start with Family Ties.
What is Clarice Lispector’s most famous book?
The Hour of the Star (1977), about Macabéa, a poor typist from the Northeast living in Rio. The Passion According to G.H. (1964) is the book critics most often call her masterpiece.
Is The Hour of the Star a film?
Yes. Suzana Amaral’s A Hora da Estrela (1985) starred Marcélia Cartaxo as Macabéa, who won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival in 1986. It was Brazil’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
Was Clarice Lispector Brazilian or Ukrainian?
Both, in a sense. She was born in Chechelnyk, in present-day Ukraine, in 1920, to a Jewish family who brought her to Brazil in early 1922, when she was a baby. She grew up in Maceió, Recife and Rio, wrote only in Portuguese and considered herself Brazilian.
Which translation of Clarice Lispector should I read?
Most of her books are now available in new translations from New Directions and Penguin Modern Classics, including The Hour of the Star by Benjamin Moser (2011) and The Complete Stories by Katrina Dodson (2015), which won the PEN Translation Prize. Giovanni Pontiero’s earlier version of The Hour of the Star (1986) is still in print.
Did Clarice Lispector win any prizes?
Yes. Near to the Wild Heart won the Graça Aranha Prize for the best debut novel of 1943, Family Ties the Jabuti Prize in 1961 and The Apple in the Dark the Carmen Dolores Barbosa Prize. In 1976 she won first prize at Brazil’s tenth national literary competition for her work as a whole.
How did Clarice Lispector die?
Of ovarian cancer, in Rio de Janeiro, on 9 December 1977, one day before her 57th birthday. She had not been told the diagnosis. She was buried in the Jewish Cemetery of Caju.
What happened to Clarice Lispector’s hand?
In September 1966 she fell asleep after taking a sleeping pill with a lit cigarette, and the fire badly burned her. Her right hand nearly had to be amputated; she later described the following days as “three days in hell”.
Footnotes
- Clarice Lispector — Wikipedia
- Book to book — Clarice Lispector, Instituto Moreira Salles
- The Hour of the Star — Wikipedia
- Hour of the Star (film) — Wikipedia
- Review: four novels by Clarice Lispector — The Boston Globe, 2012
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Everything in the world began with a yes.”
— Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star (1977), the opening of the story, trans. Benjamin Moser
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