Near to the Wild Heart

About “Near to the Wild Heart”

Near to the Wild Heart is Clarice Lispector's debut novel, written from March to November 1942 and published in December 1943, around her twenty-third birthday. The novel is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, similar to that of English-language Modernists. It follows the childhood and early adulthood of a character named Joana, who shares strong similarities with the author. Lispector once said, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi," referencing Gustave Flaubert, when asked about the parallels between Joana and herself. The novel's innovative language brought Lispector widespread recognition in Brazilian literature and earned her the Graça Aranha Prize. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)