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by Clarice Lispector
One of Elena Ferrante's Top 40 Books by Women G.H., a well-to-do Rio sculptress, enters the room of her maid, which is as clear and white 'as in an insane asylum from which dangerous objects have been removed'. There she sees a cockroach - black, dusty, prehistoric - crawling out of the wardrobe and, panicking, slams the door on it. Her irresistible fascination with the dying insect provokes a spiritual crisis, in which she questions her place in the universe and her very identity, propelling her towards an act of shocking transgression. Clarice Lispector's spare, deeply disturbing yet luminous novel transforms language into something otherworldly, and is one of her most unsettling and compelling works. Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian novelist and short story writer. Her innovation in fiction brought her international renown. References to her literary work pervade the music and literature of Brazil and Latin America. She was born in the Ukraine in 1920, but in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Civil War, the family fled to Romania and eventually sailed to Brazil. She published her first novel, Near to the Wildheart in 1943 when she was just twenty-three, and the next year was awarded the Graça Aranha Prize for the best first novel. Many felt she had given Brazillian literature a unique voice in the larger context of Portuguese literature. After living variously in Italy, the UK, Switzerland and the US, in 1959, Lispector with her children returned to Brazil where she wrote her most influential novels including The Passion According to G.H. She died in 1977, shortly after the publication of her final novel, The Hour of the Star.
10 recommendations
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Fans of G.H.'s descent into the 'neutral' and her visceral reaction to existence will find a kindred spirit in Roquentin. Both novels explore the thin veil between human meaning and the raw, terrifying reality of physical objects.
Like Lispector, Woolf uses a highly lyrical, stream-of-consciousness style to explore the fluid nature of the self. It captures the same sense of internal rhythm and the difficulty of pinning down a stable identity through language.
by Franz Kafka
As the most direct parallel to the cockroach encounter, Kafka’s work shares themes of alienation and the grotesque. It mirrors G.H.’s experience of being stripped of her social status and forced into a primal, terrifying state of being.
by Han Kang
This novel shares the intense, disturbing focus on the body and the radical rejection of societal expectations. Like G.H., the protagonist undergoes a transformation that is both a psychological breakdown and a spiritual breakthrough.
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This book captures the same hypersensitive observation of the world and the resulting internal fragmentation. It resonates with Lispector’s focus on the 'thing-in-itself' and the struggle to find language for the sublime.
For readers who enjoyed the linguistic struggle and the dissolution of the 'I' in Lispector’s work, Beckett offers an even more radical exploration. It shares the same claustrophobic, intense focus on a single consciousness.
This novel provides a similar sense of radical isolation and the subsequent re-evaluation of what it means to be human. It echoes G.H.’s journey from a civilized woman to a creature existing in a raw, unmediated state.
This modern work mirrors the fragmented, haunting quality of Lispector’s prose and her preoccupation with identity. It explores how the self is haunted by other versions of itself and by the ghosts of literature.
The relentless, obsessive monologue and the intellectual intensity will appeal to those who liked the unyielding pace of G.H.’s thoughts. It shares a similar focus on the failure of art and the weight of existence.
As a companion to G.H., this book pushes the limits of language even further into a pure, ecstatic present. It is the ultimate recommendation for those who want more of Lispector’s unique brand of philosophical mysticism.
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