The Hour of the Star
Cover of the English edition
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| Author | Clarice Lispector |
|---|---|
| Original title | A Hora da Estrela |
| Translator | Giovanni Pontiero |
| Country | Brazil |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | José Olympio Editora |
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Publication date
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1977 |
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Published in English
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1992 and 2011 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 86 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 24246408 |
| 869.3 20 | |
| LC Class | PQ9697.L585 H6713 1992 |
| Preceded by | Onde estivestes de noite (Where Were You At Night) |
| Followed by | Um sopro de vida (pulsações) (A Breath of Life (pulsations)) |
The Hour of the Star (A hora da estrela) is a novel by Clarice Lispector published in 1977, shortly after the author's death. In 1985, the novel was adapted by Suzana Amaral into a film of the same name, which won the Silver Bear for Best Actress in the 36th Berlin International Film Festival of 1986. It has been translated into English twice by New Directions Publishing with Giovanni Pontiero's 1992 translation followed by Benjamin Moser's version in 2011.
The Hour of the Star deals with the problems of the rural Northeast versus the urban Southeast, poverty and the dream of a better life, and, of an uneducated woman’s struggle to survive in a sexist society. Another prevalent theme is that of the narrator's powerful position in delivering the plot, including a form of intrusive narration in which the narrator speaks directly to the reader. In February 1977, Lispector gave her only televised interview, with Júlio Lerner of TV Cultura in São Paulo. In it, she mentioned a book she had just completed with “thirteen names, thirteen titles,” though she refused to name them. According to her, the book is "the story of a girl who was so poor that all she ate was hot dogs. That’s not the story, though. The story is about a crushed innocence, about an anonymous misery."
Alienation- Throughout the novel, Macabea is alienated from her family, her boyfriend, and those outside of her social class, ultimately leading her to die alone. This is shown in a variety of ways- most notably in her boyfriend's work on a conveyor belt, in what Marx would call a textbook example of alienation.
Clarice used her own childhood in the Northeast region of Brazil as reference to build the protagonist Macabéa. She also mentioned a gathering of people from this region in the São Cristóvão neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, where she first captured the "disoriented look" of the Northeasterns in the city. Clarice was also inspired by a fortune teller she visited, an event upon which she bases the final part of the plot. When she was leaving the fortune teller's house, she found it amusing to imagine herself being hit by a yellow Mercedes and dying immediately after hearing all the good projections the fortune teller foresaw for her future.
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Wikipedia