Novel
The Hour of the Star
A hora da estrela
Clarice Lispector · 1977
Synopsis
A narrator, the writer Rodrigo S. M., himself from the Northeast, sets out to tell the life of a young girl glimpsed in the crowd of Rio. An orphan raised by an aunt, Macabéa has left Alagoas for Rio, where she lives in a rented room and works as a typist in an office on the rua do Lavradio. Her only window on the world is the radio, which gives her scraps of information. Her fiancé Olímpico, an ambitious man from the Northeast who dreams of being a deputy, leaves her for Glória, her office colleague.
Context
The novel was published in 1977, shortly before its author's hospitalisation, and was the last book published in her lifetime. The narrative alternates the narrator's voice with third-person narration, with little dialogue and many digressions. Its structure, relatively linear according to Cultura Genial, makes it an entry point into the author's work. Suzana Amaral made it into a film in 1985, which won a prize at the Brasília festival and then a Silver Bear at Berlin in 1986.
Who it is for
A very short novel in which the narrator comments on his story as it is being written; the French translation by Marguerite Wünscher appeared from Des femmes in 1985.
Prizes and reception
The author's last novel, it was adapted for the cinema in a film distinguished at Brasília as well as at Berlin.
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