Breath of Life (Penguin Books)

This is Clarice Lispector's final novel, 'written in agony', which she did not live to see published. Sensual and mysterious, it is a mystical dialogue between a god-like author and the creation he breathes life into: the speaking, shifting, indefinable Angela Pralini. As he has created Angela, so, eventually, he must let her die, for life is merely 'a kind of madness that death makes.' This is a unique, elegiac meditation on the creation of life, and of art.Review: A text that resonates endlessly... Her images dazzle The Times Literary Supplement Lispector had an ability to write as though no one had ever written before Colm Toibin A thrilling book Pedro Almodovar