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A finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award
New York Times Notable Book
“That rare person who looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf,” Clarice Lispector is one of the most popular but least understood of Latin American writers. Now, after years of research on three continents, drawing on previously unknown manuscripts and dozens of interviews, Benjamin Moser demonstrates how Lispector’s development as a writer was directly connected to the story of her turbulent life. Born in the nightmarish landscape of post-World War I Ukraine, Clarice became, virtually from adolescence, a person whose beauty, genius, and eccentricity intrigued Brazil. Why This World tells how this precocious girl, through long exile abroad and difficult personal struggles, matured into a great writer. It also asserts, for the first time, the deep roots in the Jewish mystical tradition that make her the true heir to Kafka as well as the unlikely author of “perhaps the greatest spiritual autobiography of the twentieth century.” From Chechelnik to Recife, from Naples and Berne to Washington and Rio de Janeiro, Why This World strips away the mythology surrounding this extraordinary figure and shows how Clarice Lispector transformed one woman’s struggles into a universally resonant art.
Why This World reviewed in the New York Times Book Review
Why This World chosen as one of Amazon.com’s Best Books of the Month for August
Why This World selected as a New York Times Notable Book of 2009
Why This World chosen as a Los Angeles Times Favorite Nonfiction title of 2009
Why This World chosen as “Best of 2009” by Barnes and Noble
Why This World elected a Booklist Editors’ Choice, 2009
Why This World chosen as a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Awards
Reviews
“Lively, ardent and intellectually rigorous … His energetically researched, finely argued biography will surely win Lispector the English-language readership she deserves.”
–Fernanda Eberstadt, The New York Times Book Review
“Benjamin Moser’s Why This World makes up for this long drought by offering a detailed and dramatic biography of Lispector’s incredible life and times. Based on new interviews with family and friends, recovered manuscripts, and other fresh sources, Moser crafts a moving and tangible portrait of the famously inscrutable Clarice.”
–Lauren Nemroff, Amazon.com, “Best of the Month”
“Benjamin Moser has written a brilliant, extraordinarily well researched, philosophically profound, and beautiful work that does full justice to its subject. There were moments when I was so overwhelmed that I almost felt unworthy of reading it.”
–Peter Philbrook, Best of 2009, Barnes & Noble
“Moser allows Lispector to remain a woman of daunting contradictions and unravels instead a complex portrait of an artist whose aesthetic and inventiveness were way ahead of her time. Moser’s fluid and addicting prose rarely falters as he follows Lispector relentlessly from country to country, book to book, headache to heartache, keeping a respectful distance from the private dramas of the writer he admires, but mining thoroughly the subtle nuances and hard-to-find revelations within Lispector’s work. The intersections of fact and fabrication, life and literature, are skillfully pulled apart by this sensitive and intelligent biographer, who highlights, above all else, Lispector’s dignity and creative drive. By presenting such a classy and accessible study of this popular Latin American author, Moser will undoubtedly renew interest in Lispector’s work, most of which remains untranslated into English or only feebly available. And for those who have not yet met or heard of Clarice, Moser’s impressive biography is indeed a memorable introduction.”
–Rigoberto González, National Book Critics Circle Finalist nomination
“This is rich biographical material that gets only richer as Mr. Moser, a translator and a book critic for Harper’s Magazine, begins to unpeel the layers of her complicated life. Why This World sucks you … into its subject’s strange vortex. … [Moser] is a lucid and very learned tour guide, and his book is a fascinating and welcome introduction to a writer whose best work should be better known in this country.”
–Dwight Garner, New York Times
“Such a rich and affecting mesh of history, biography, and literary insights … beautifully rendered. … First-time biographer Moser, book columnist for Harper’s, demonstrates sharp interpretative skills in tracing the influence of the kabbalah, Spinoza, and Kafka on Lispector’s spiritual and artistic quest, and great sensitivity in chronicling her wrenching last years. Moser’s richly contextualized, uniquely insightful, and haunting biography of mystic and writer Lispector resurrects a ‘penetrating genius.’”
–Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
“Fascinating and intricate … The mystery of what turned a pedlar’s daughter from Recife into such an original writer is never dispelled by Moser’s book. This would please her.”
–Lorna Scott Fox, London Review of Books
“Treats Clarice and her many mysteries very gently. Moser carefully unwraps the very raw, intimate character behind her very introspective books. …Why This World is an excellent feat of portraiture. In 1964, Clarice wrote, ‘if I had to give a title to my life it would be: in search of the thing itself.’ With Moser’s book, many readers will find that she is quite a thing to discover indeed.”
–Natasha Randall, Los Angeles Times
“In Why This World, his sensitive, thorough biography of the writer, he has crafted a humanizing portrait of a woman who sought to transcend categorization.”
–Tayt Harlin, Bookforum
“Moser’s biography does full justice to the complexity of that soul, and to the breadth of Lispector’s writing. It is a dense, scholarly book, full of tight allusions between the author’s life and the life of her characters — a book that allows Clarice to become more than the myth by which she was always surrounded. One senses its subject would have been happy with the loftiness of the approach.”
–Ed Caesar, Sunday Times (London)
“Impressively researched… Well-written and remarkable … He discusses her work in great detail, book after book, with sympathy and insight, and admirably eschews jargon … Moser is impressive … in his interest and take on Brazilian politics. Providing authoritative historical backdrop is his forte.”
–Lorrie Moore, New York Review of Books
“Impassioned… Moser’s unabashed delight in his subject, and his liberal use of superlatives, confirm that Lispector, who died in 1977, continues to exert a strong appeal. The pivotal contribution of Moser’s biography is to illuminate Lispector’s roots in Eastern European Jewish culture. … By establishing this background in persuasive detail, Moser is able to decipher Lispector’s more impenetrable fictions as Jewish allegories.”
–Stephen Henighan, Times Literary Supplement
“Enthralling … Moser was able to interview friends, relatives and survivors, people who knew Clarice Lispector and who witnessed many of the events in her life. His decision to offer his readers an instant, detailed education in Brazilian history, literature and culture is a wise one. … Some anecdotes are irresistible. … It is one of the strengths of his biography that he attempts both to interpret her writing and to present extensive translated passages, so that the strange flavour of Clarice is present on the page.”
–Patricia Duncker, Literary Review
“Benjamin Moser’s Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector (Oxford University Press) uncovers the iconic author’s double life: the diplomat’s wife in war-shattered Europe and the elusive genius who dramatized a fractured interior world in rich, synesthetic prose.”
–Megan O’Grady, Vogue
“An absorbing and perceptive biography of a fascinating writer.”
–The Economist
“Since she died in 1977, her fate she has been one of those writers who is revered rather than read. A grave injustice, Moser argues persuasively in this absorbing life.”
–Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman (five stars)
“Benjamin Moser, who has thoroughly researched and elegantly presented the life of this gifted and glamorous woman, seems to have been caught up in her “glacial intensity.’’ This is a very cool and detached performance.”
–Barbara Fisher, Boston Globe
“Lispector lived a large, glamorous and difficult life, which Benjamin Moser evokes in expressive detail, against a finely constructed historic and political backdrop. The biographer dives into the philosophical and theological concerns of his subject’s literary output without skimping on the travails, pleasures and idiosyncrasies of her everyday life.”
–Julie Salamon, Moment
“Stimulating … One upshot, hopefully, of Moser’s globe-trotting biography is that more of her work will end up being translated or reprinted in this country.”
–Robert Cremins, Houston Chronicle
“Elegantly written, carefully researched … Moser’s monumental project could have been a violation, a tearing away of the veil of privacy Lispector so carefully wore. But for all of his detailed and illuminating research, he remains endearingly loyal to his subject. His complex and nuanced biography allows Lispector her essential mystery.”
–Philip Graham, The New Leader
“Superbly documented, meticulously researched … Felicitously, Moser’s biography brings Clarice Lispector to life and, in so doing, invites readers to belong to her world of vision and spirit.”
–Nelson Vieira, Brown Alumni Monthly
“Comprehensive, inspired, respectful of necessary silences — it does what Lispector set as a goal for her own writing: to leave unexplained what cannot be explained.”
–Yelena Akhtiorskaya, Jewish Daily Forward
“Superb … Moser is clearly in love with Lispector, a condition that infuses the biography with an almost romantic spirit. As Clarice would have it, Moser learns from her, apprentices under her…. Moser’s combination of biography and literary criticism nimbly questions the relationship between life and literature, and ultimately reveals the immense complexity of Lispector’s works.”
–Mónica Szurmuk, World Books Review
“Moser’s account of her life is riveting–he draws extensively on previously untranslated letters and criticism (he does the translations himself, from Yiddish, German, French and Portuguese); at times the book reads like a gothic horror story.”
–Rachel Aviv, The Nation
“This pioneering biography of Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (1920–1977)—a genius of character as much as a literary magician—captures the luminescent and singular author for an English-speaking audience that may not be familiar with her. … This well-researched biography by Moser, New Books columnist for Harper’s, should send readers in search of this indescribable author, whose work in many ways is closer to cabalistic writing than to more contemporary modernists like Woolf, Kafka or Joyce.”
–Publishers Weekly
“‘Where there is God, there is nothing,’ Kabbalists said. Moser places Lispector in their company: a descendent of Abulafia via Spinoza in pursuit of the Unnameable. This may sit awkwardly with “Helen Palmer” advising middle-class Rio housewives on how to treat their skin while secretly taking stipends from a manufacturer of face cream. But then, why not?”
–Stoddard Martin, The Jewish Chronicle
“A major biography that identifies Lispector as a mystic in the tradition of her Jewish forebears. Interlaid with brilliant quotations from Lispector’s fiction, letters, and interviews, the book offers plenty of evidence of her passionate and sometimes desperate spiritual search.”
–Charisse Gendron, Rain Taxi Review of Books
“A biography worthy of its great subject … One of the twentieth century’s most mysterious writers is finally revealed in all her vibrant colors.”
–Orhan Pamuk
“Clarice Lispector is one of the hidden geniuses of twentieth century literature, in the same league as Flann O’Brien, Borges and Pessoa. Her stories and imaginative procedures are utterly original and brilliant, haunting and disturbing. It is impossible, as you read her, to know who she might have been, or where she came from, or what she was like. Now, finally, the plot has been thickened and the problem solved by Benjamin Moser’s biography which is rich in detail and original research and filled with sympathy for what must remain hidden and what must be understood. He has written a great book about a Jewish heroine whose family lived through some of the worst episodes of the last century in Europe; he has given also a fascinating account of modern Brazil where Lispector’s work is treasured and her genius recognized.”
–Colm Tóibín
“Everything about Clarice Lispector was unlikely: her great beauty, her early fame, her unique voice, her status as an icon to Brazilians, her passions and masks, and her family history as the daughter of destitute Jews who barely escaped the murderous pogroms of their native Ukraine to settle in Recife. It is also something of a mystery that almost no one in the English-speaking world recognizes her name–a name that is perhaps as important to modern literature as that of Virginia Woolf. But in Benjamin Moser, she has found a gifted young biographer, social historian, and prose stylist who is able to take her elusive measure. This book is enthralling.”
—Judith Thurman
“Clarice Lispector is one of the summits of Latin American literature. She continues to be read and respected, studied and admired. Benjamin Moser has written not only a splendid biography but a story that almost reads like fiction. Whether or not you know this delicate and powerful woman, this book deserves to be read. After finishing it, you will be in love with her.”
—Guillermo Arriaga
“Clarice Lispector was a highly original novelist born to a Jewish family in Russia and raised in Brazil. She spent many years in the United States. Her fiction is brilliant and unclassifiable, translated and championed by Elizabeth Bishop, who compared her favorably to Borges. Glamorous, cultured, moody, Lispector is an emblematic twentieth-century artist who belongs in the same pantheon as Kafka and Joyce. Benjamin Moser has recreated all the psychological and cultural context needed to understand this great writer, and brought to life her essentially tragic nature in all its complexity.”
—Edmund White
“A smart, passionate portrait of a truly remarkable writer. Lispector is a great subject, and Moser is the perfect biographer for her.”
—Jonathan Franzen