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The Apple in the Dark, Clarice Lispector’s fourth novel, was published in Rio de Janeiro in 1961, five years after she completed the last of its eleven drafts. Begun in Agatha Christie’s hometown of Torquay, where Lispector’s husband, a diplomat, …

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I’m afraid of turning on the TV and, like someone going into the Underground at rush hour, of having my intelligence stepped on, whether out of carelessness or malice. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to.’ Curled up in a …

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They had grown used to him. But when the

Tilley lamp was brought and threw

fitful beams into the darkening room, the stranger

grew unknowable. They washed his neck

and, as they knew nothing of his circumstances,

they wove …

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It was the time I liked the most, definitely. Three in the afternoon, sheets whitening on the clothesline, the sun blazing on the flagstones of the porch, the four of us in the back yard, having fled the house with …

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