Benjamin Moser

"Arriving as a young writer in an ancient Dutch town, Benjamin Moser found himself visiting ... the country's great museums. Inside these old buildings, he discovered the remains of the Dutch Golden Age, and began to unearth the strange, inspiring, and terrifying stories of the artists who gave shape to one of the most luminous moments in the history of human creativity. Beyond the sainted Rembrandt--who harbored a startling darkness--and the mysterious...

Of glacial intensity, consisting almost entirely of interior monologues-interrupted by odd and jarring fragments of dialogue and action-The Chandelier moves in slow waves that crest in moments of revelation. As Virginia seeks freedom via creation, the drama of her isolated life is almost entirely internal: from childhood, she sculpts clay figurines with "the best clay one could desire: white, supple, sticky, cold. She got a clear and tender material...

While explaining to her sons why their fish is dead, the author relates stories of memorable animals in her life.

"The devastating final work by Brazil's greatest modern writer, The Hour of the Star tells the haunting tale of Macabéa-a typist who lives in the slums of Rio-underfed, sickly, and unloved, yet inwardly free"--

G.H., a well-to-do Rio sculptress, enters her maid's room, sees a cockroach crawling out of the wardrobe, and, panicking, slams the door on it. The sight of the dying insect provokes a mystical crisis, at the height of which comes one of the most famous and genuinely shocking scenes in Latin American literature. Clarice Lispector wrote that of all of her works this novel was the one that "best corresponded to her demands as a writer."