The besieged city / Clarice Lispector ; translated from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz ; introduction by Benjamin Moser ; edited by Benjamin Moser.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lispector, Clarice, author.

Contributor:

Lorenz, Johnny, translator.

Moser, Benjamin, 1976- editor.

Standardized Title:

Cidade sitiada. English

Language:

English

Portuguese

Subjects (All):

Women--Fiction.

Women.

Portuguese language materials--Bilingual.

Brazil--Fiction.

Brazil.

Local Subjects:

Portuguese language materials--Bilingual.

Genre:

Fiction.

Psychological fiction.

Physical Description:

xxi, 213 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : New Directions, 2019.

Summary:

Lucrécia Neves is ready to marry. Her suitors--soldierly Felipe, pensive Perseu, dependable Mateus--are attracted to her tawdry not-quite-beauty, which is of a piece with São Geraldo, the rough-and-ready township she inhabits. Civilization is on its way to this place, where wild horses still roam. As Lucrécia is tamed by marriage, São Geraldo gradually expels its horses; and as the town strives for the highest attainment it can conceive--a viaduct--it takes on the progressively more metropolitan manners that Lucrécia, with her vulgar ambitions, desires too. Yet it is precisely through this woman's superficiality--her identification with the porcelain knickknacks in her mother's parlor--that Clarice Lispector creates a profound and enigmatic meditation on "the mystery of the thing."

Contents:

The hill in the pasture

The citizen

The hunt

The public statue

In the garden

Sketch of the city

The alliance with the outsider

The betrayal

The exposed treasure

The corn in the field

The first deserters

End of the construction: the viaduct.

Notes:

Originally published as A Cidade Sitiada in 1949.

Other Format:

Online version: Lispector, Clarice. Besieged city.

ISBN:

9780811226714

0811226719

OCLC:

1042355522