An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures

An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures

Summary

'One of the very great writers of the last century' Guardian

'Lispector had an ability to write as though no one had ever written before' Colm Tóibín


'He'd wait for her, she knew that now. Until she learned'

Lóri yearns for love yet is scared of herself, and of connecting with another human. When she meets Ulisses, a Professor of Philosophy, she is forced to confront her fears. As both of them will learn, to be worthy of another person, they must first be fully themselves. The book of which Clarice Lispector said, 'I humanized myself', An Apprenticeship is about the ultimate unknowability of the other in a relationship, and what it means to love and be loved.

Translated by Stefan Tobler
Edited by Benjamin Moser with an Afterword by Sheila Heti

Reviews

  • Her brilliant and bewildering style is helping me to imagine how to write again
    Jenny Offill, The Times

About the author

Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian novelist and short-story writer. Her innovation in fiction brought her international renown. 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 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. She died in 1977, shortly after the publication of her final novel, The Hour of the Star.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more