Published in 1968, An Apprenticeship is Clarice LispectorтАЩs attempt to reinvent herself following the exhausting effort of her metaphysical masterpiece The Passion According to G. H. Here, in this unconventional love story, she explores the ways in which people try to bridge the gaps between them, and the result, unusual in her work, surprised many readers and became a bestseller.
Some appreciated its accessibility; others denounced it as sexist or superficial. To both admirers and critics, the olympian Clarice gave a typically elliptical answer: тАЬI humanized myself,тАЭ she said. тАЬThe book reflects that.тАЭ
Clarice Lispector (1920тАУ1977), the greatest Brazilian writer of the twentieth century, has been called тАЬastoundingтАЭ (Rachel Kushner), тАЬa penetrating geniusтАЭ (Donna Seaman, Booklist), and тАЬone of the twentieth centuryтАЩs most mysterious writersтАЭ (Orhan Pamuk).
Born in Bel├йm, Brazil, Stefan Tobler is the publisher of And Other Stories and, whenever time permits, a translator from Portuguese and German. His translation of Arno GeigerтАЩs The Old King in His Exile was shortlisted for both the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize and Schlegel-Tieck Prize, and his other translations include the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize-shortlisted ├Бgua Viva by Clarice Lispector and the Man Booker International Prize finalist A Cup of Rage by Raduan Nassar.
Sheila Heti is the author of several books of fiction and nonfiction, including How Should a Person Be?, which New York Magazine deemed one of the тАЬNew Classics of the 21st century." She was named one of "The New Vanguard" by The New York Times book critics, who, along with a dozen other magazines and newspapers, chose Motherhood as a top book of 2018. Her books have been translated into twenty-one languages.
General editor of the new translations of Clarice LispectorтАЩs complete works at New Directions, BENJAMIN MOSER is the author of Why This World: The Biography of Clarice Lispector, and Sontag: Her Life and Work, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His new book, The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters, will be published in October.