Hilda Hilst - Böcker

The Obscene Madame D is the electrifying masterpiece by one of modern Brazilian literature's most significant and controversial writers.At sixty years old, Hillé decides to abandon conventional life and devote the rest of her days to contemplation in a recess under the stairs. There, she is haunted by her perplexed, recently deceased lover, Ehud, who cannot understand her rejection of common sense, sex and a simple life in favour of vain metaphysical speculations.In a stream-of-consciousness monologue, Hillé speaks of her search for spiritual fulfilment from a space of dereliction. In thrilling prose that is part Joyce, part Lispector and part de Sade, Hilda Hilst takes us into the disorder and beauty of a mind restlessly testing its own limits.

In Letters from a Seducer, Hilst describes the everyday life of Karl, a wealthy, erudite, and amoral man who seeks an answer to his incomprehension of life through sex. Karl writes and sends twenty provocative letters to Cordelia, his chaste sister. The letters' text becomes intertwined with the life of the poet Stamatius, who finds Karl's letters in the trash, as Hilst constructs an ingenious mirror play between the two that casts strange light on questions of amorality, sexuality and the spirit.Linguistically rich and endlessly playful, Letters from a Seducer is a work of perverse genius by one of Brazil's greatest modern writers.