Editing Clarice Lispector (section)

===''Near to the Wild Heart''===
{{main|Near to the Wild Heart}}
In December 1943, Lispector published her first novel, ''Perto do coração selvagem'' (''Near to the Wild Heart''). The novel, which tells of the inner life of a young woman named Joana, caused a sensation. In October 1944, the book won the prestigious Graça Aranha Prize for the best debut novel of 1943. One critic, the poet [[Lêdo Ivo]], called it "the greatest novel a woman has ever written in the Portuguese language."<ref>Instituto Moreira Salles, ''Clarice Lispector: Cadernos de Literatura Brasileira'', IMS, p. 49.</ref> Another wrote that Lispector had "shifted the center of gravity around which the Brazilian novel had been revolving for about twenty years".<ref>Jorge de Lima, "Romances de Mulher", ''Gazeta de Notícias'', November 1, 1944.</ref> "Clarice Lispector's work appears in our literary world as the most serious attempt at the introspective novel," wrote the São Paulo critic [[Sérgio Milliet]]. "For the first time, a Brazilian author goes beyond simple approximation in this almost virgin field of our literature; for the first time, an author penetrates the depths of the psychological complexity of the modern soul."<ref>Sérgio Milliet, ''Diário Crítico'', Vol. 2.</ref>

This novel, like all of her subsequent works, was marked by an intense focus on interior emotional states. When the novel was published, many claimed that her stream-of-consciousness writing style was heavily influenced by [[Virginia Woolf]] or [[James Joyce]], but she only read these authors after the book was ready.<ref>Lispector, Clarice. "Correspondências – Clarice Lispector (organized by Teresa Montero)", Rio de Janeiro, Rocco, 2002. Based on private letters she exchanged with [[Lúcio Cardoso]] and her sister Tania.</ref> The epigraph from Joyce and the title, which is taken from Joyce's ''[[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]'', were both suggested by [[Lúcio Cardoso]].

Shortly afterwards, Lispector and Maury Gurgel left Rio for the northern city of [[Belém]], in the state of [[Pará]], at the mouth of the [[Amazon River|Amazon]]. There, Maury served as a liaison between the Foreign Ministry and the international visitors who were using northern Brazil as a military base in World War II.