The apple in the dark

Described by Clarice Lispector as 'the best one', this intoxicating portrayal of a man searching for his destiny is her mystical, enigmatic masterpiece

'All I've got is hunger. And that instable way of grasping an apple in the dark-without letting it fall'

Martim, believing that he has committed a murder, flees the city and escapes into the night. Wandering through the vastness of nature he arrives, in a state of fear and wonder, at a remote ranch run by two women. There Martim finds work and, as he labours in the blistering heat of the Brazilian summer, becomes transfigured; remade into something else entirely.

Translated by Benjamin Moser

'The most important Brazilian woman writer of the twentieth century... The richness of The Apple in the Dark defies the explanatory power of any single interpretation' TLS