A bela e a fera é o quarto volume da coleção de edições especiais com os manuscritos e datiloscritos de Clarice Lispector, na qual já foram publicados os romances A hora da estrela, Água viva e Perto do coração selvagem.
Os dois últimos contos que escreveu foram juntados aos seis contos que marcaram o início de sua carreira, todos publicados somente após seu falecimento, evidenciando a progressão e desenvolvimento de sua trajetória como escritora. Apresenta-se aqui, assim, um panorama ímpar de sua produção como contista, categoria na qual foi contemplada com um Prêmio Jabuti em 1960, por Laços de família.
Enriquecem o conjunto cinco ensaios inéditos de grandes pesquisadores e estudiosos da obra "Eros e Tânatos no reino desencantado", de Yudith Rosenbaum; "Retratos artísticos da hora perdida", de Claudia Nina; "A ferida grande demais", de José Castello; "A busca que reflexões sobre dois contos de Clarice Lispector", de Faustino Teixeira; e "Clarice, desconcertante e parceira", de Bernardo Ajzenberg.
Ensaios brilhantes e depoimentos emocionantes que espelham a beleza selvagem e a irrepreensível coerência da obra de Clarice Lispector, sempre igual a si mesma, completamente diferente de todos.
Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in Western Ukraine, she was brought to Brazil as an infant, amidst the disasters engulfing her native land following the First World War.
She grew up in northeastern Brazil, where her mother died when she was nine. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when she was in her teens. While in law school in Rio she began publishing her first journalistic work and short stories, catapulting to fame at age 23 with the publication of her first novel, 'Near to the Wild Heart' (Perto do Coração Selvagem), written as an interior monologue in a style and language that was considered revolutionary in Brazil.
She left Brazil in 1944, following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States. Upon return to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she began producing her most famous works, including the stories of Family Ties (Laços de Família), the great mystic novel The Passion According to G.H. (A Paixão Segundo G.H.), and the novel many consider to be her masterpiece, Água Viva. Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories until her premature death in 1977.
She has been the subject of numerous books and references to her, and her works are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films, one being 'Hour of the Star' and she was the subject of a recent biography, Why This World, by Benjamin Moser.