Clarice Lispector's masterly second novel, now available in English for the first time
'She found the best clay that one could desire: white, supple, sticky, cold ... She would get a clear and tender material from which she could shape a world'
Like the clay from which she sculpts figurines as a girl, Virginia is constantly shifting and changing. From her dreamlike childhood on Quiet Farm with her adored brother Daniel, through an adulthood where the past continues to pull her back and shape her, she moves through life, grasping for the truth of existence. Illuminating Virginia's progress through intense flashes of image, sensation and perception, The Chandelier, Lispector's landmark second novel, is a disorienting and exhilarating portrait of one woman's inner life.
'Utterly original and brilliant, haunting and disturbing' Colm Tóibín
Translated by Benjamin Moser and Magdalena Edwards
"Prolific and peerless ... a Brazilian national treasure ... Clarice sought a knowledge beyond knowledge, a wisdom that left wisdom behind ... through her texts emerges the struggle of life: how to live each day, what the painful process of loving is, why one should pick up a pen and respond to indignity in the first place" - Carlos Valladares ― Gagosian Quarterly
