The Imitation of the Rose

Laura has had the house in order for days in preparation for the return of her husband from a business trip. The flowers are perfect. The children are well. And yet something is wrong — or rather, something is too right, too still, too precisely as it should be, with a precision that has its own kind of terror. Clarice Lispector’s ‘The Imitation of the Rose’ is one of the most disturbing and most formally perfect short stories of the twentieth century: a portrait of a woman on the edge of a breakdown rendered in prose of complete surface calm.

This Penguin Little Black Classic gathers the story alongside other essential Lispector works, offering one of the most concentrated available introductions to a writer who continues to astonish. Her technique — of using completely ordinary surfaces to reveal extraordinary inner states — is at its most controlled here, and the cumulative effect is close to unbearable.

Essential Lispector for those new to her work, and unmissable for those who already love it. A demonstration of what the short story form can do when it is completely in command of itself. Published by Penguin.