The Human Spirit in the Language: Interview with Francisco Goldman

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I met Francisco Goldman in the summer of 2022, outside a cafe in the San Miguel neighborhood of Mexico City, some blocks from the apartment he shares with his wife, their daughter, and his wife’s niece (who lives under their care). Months before, I’d written a review about Goldman’s latest novel, the Pulitzer Prize-finalist Monkey Boy. He was an author whose books I’d loved immoderately for years, an author whose best lines I cherished and could recite word for word, not misplacing even a dash or a comma. I decided to approach the review as if it were a conversation […]

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The Brazilian Bird of Prey: Four New Translations of Clarice Lispector

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In his preface to Clarice Lispector’s A Breath of Life (Pulsations), editor Benjamin Moser calls the four new translations from New Directions of Lispector’s novels—including Água Viva, Near to the Wild Heart, and The Passion According to G.H.—“the most important project of translation into English of a Latin American author since the complete works of Jorge Luis Borges were published a decade ago.” This is hardly a disinterested opinion: Moser himself kicked off the retranslations of Lispector’s work with The Hour of the Star (New Directions), published late last year. He also published a biography of Lispector in 2009, Why […]

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