Clarice Lispector’s final novel, first published in Brazil in 1977, the year she died, is short and strange. Its narrator, the writer Rodrigo S.M., sets out to tell the story of Macabéa, a poor, half-starved typist from Brazil’s northeast drifting through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. He keeps stopping to question his right to tell it at all. What follows is part novella, part confession and part argument about writing itself. It is funny, cruel and very tender about a woman the world barely notices. This is an ideal way into one of the twentieth century’s most singular writers, and you can read it in an afternoon and think about it for years. Published by Sendb00ks