32 Facts About Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector grew up in Recife, the capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, where her mother died when she was nine.

Clarice Lispector left Brazil in 1944 following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States.

Clarice Lispector has been the subject of numerous books, and references to her and her work are common in Brazilian literature and music.

Clarice Lispector was born Chaya Lispector in Chechelnyk, Podolia, a shtetl in what is today Ukraine.

Clarice Lispector was the youngest of three daughters of Pinkhas Lispector and Mania Krimgold Lispector.

Clarice Lispector's family suffered terribly in the pogroms during the Russian Civil War that followed the dissolution of the Russian Empire, circumstances later dramatized in her older sister Elisa Lispector's autobiographical novel No exilio.

Clarice Lispector attended the Colegio Hebreo-Idisch-Brasileiro, which taught Hebrew and Yiddish in addition to the usual subjects.

In 1935, Pedro Clarice Lispector decided to move with his daughters to the then-capital, Rio de Janeiro, where he hoped to find more economic opportunity and to find Jewish husbands for his daughters.

Clarice Lispector's first known story, "Triunfo", was published in the magazine Pan on May 25,1940.

Clarice Lispector would come into contact with the younger generation of Brazilian writers, including Lucio Cardoso, with whom she fell in love.

On July 29,1944, Clarice Lispector left Brazil for the first time since she had arrived as a child, destined for Naples, where Maury was posted to the Brazilian Consulate.

Clarice Lispector worked at the military hospital in Naples taking care of wounded Brazilian troops In Rome, she met the Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, who translated parts of Near to the Wild Heart, and had her portrait painted by Giorgio de Chirico.

The book Clarice Lispector wrote in Bern, The Besieged City, tells the story of Lucrecia Neves, and the growth of her town, Sao Geraldo, from a little settlement to a large city.

The book, which is full of metaphors of vision and seeing, met with a tepid reception and was "perhaps the least loved of Clarice Lispector's novels", according to a close friend of Lispector's.

Clarice Lispector liked England, though she suffered a miscarriage on a visit to London.

In 1952, back in Rio, where the family would stay about a year, Clarice Lispector published a short volume of six stories called Alguns contos in a small edition sponsored by the Ministry of Education and Health.

Clarice Lispector worked under the pseudonym Teresa Quadros as a women's columnist at the short-lived newspaper Comicio.

Clarice Lispector grew close to the Brazilian writer Erico Verissimo, then working for the Organization of American States, and his wife Mafalda, as well as to the wife of the ambassador, Alzira Vargas, daughter of the former Brazilian dictator Getulio Vargas.

Clarice Lispector began publishing her stories in the new magazine Senhor, back in Rio.

In Brazil, Clarice Lispector struggled financially and tried to find a publisher for the novel she had completed in Washington several years before, as well as for her book of stories, Lacos de familia This book incorporated the six stories of Some Stories along with seven new stories, some of which had been published in Senhor.

Clarice Lispector was badly injured and her right hand almost had to be amputated.

In 1968, Lispector participated in the political demonstrations against Brazil's hardening military dictatorship, and published two books: her second work for children, A Mulher que matou os peixes, in which the narrator, Clarice, confesses to having forgotten to feed her son's fish, and An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures.

In 1971, Clarice Lispector published another book of stories, Felicidade clandestina, several of which hearkened back to memories of her childhood in Recife.

Clarice Lispector began working on the book that many would consider her finest, Agua Viva, though she struggled to complete it.

Clarice Lispector was insecure and asked a few people for their opinion.

That was the only time I saw Clarice Lispector hesitate before handing in a book to the publisher.

Clarice Lispector began to paint and intensified her activity as a translator, publishing translations of Agatha Christie, Oscar Wilde, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Clarice Lispector worked on a book called Um sopro de vida: pulsacoes that would be published posthumously in the mid-1970s.

Clarice Lispector used this fragmentary form for her final and perhaps most famous novel, A Hora da estrela, piecing the story together, with the help of Olga Borelli, from notes scrawled on loose bits of paper.

Shortly after The Hour of the Star was published, Clarice Lispector was admitted to the hospital.

Clarice Lispector had inoperable ovarian cancer, though she was not told the diagnosis.

Clarice Lispector died on the eve of her 57th birthday and was buried on December 11,1977, at the Jewish Cemetery of Caju, Rio de Janeiro.