Agua Viva eBook

On December 10, 1920, Clarice Lispector was born, who would become a major figure in 20th-century literature. At birth in a village in Ukraine, she received the name "Haia," which in Hebrew means "life." In the context of civil war and the persecution of the Jewish community—the pogroms—the family decided to emigrate: in 1922, Clarice Lispector arrived in Northeast Brazil, accompanied by her parents and two sisters. They changed their names and began a new life.
In 1939, Clarice Lispector went to study Law in Rio de Janeiro. The following year, she began working as a journalist and published her first short story in a magazine. She never stopped writing. Near the wild heartHer debut novel, "The Book of the World," was published in 1943, the year the writer married a Brazilian diplomat, a college classmate. Ten years later, this novel was published in France, with a cover by Henri Matisse, inaugurating a dazzling international career.
From 1944 onwards, Clarice Lispector lived in Naples, Bern, Torquay, and Washington, accompanying her husband in his diplomatic career. She returned to Brazil in 1959 after their divorce. She died in 1977 in Rio de Janeiro.
Written over nearly four decades, Clarice Lispector has published in Brazil around twenty works of fiction (including novels and short stories), several volumes of chronicles, correspondence and articles, and five children's books. Author of a body of work of unparalleled importance – published in Portugal, starting in 2025, by Companhia das Letras – and embraced by the most prestigious publishers worldwide, Clarice Lispector is an icon of literature.