The Burned Sinner and the Harmonious Angels

by Clarice Lispector

'One of the hidden geniuses of the twentieth century' - Colm Tóibín

A housewife’s life is shattered by a sudden epiphany. A simple tale of killing cockroaches fragments into multiple narratives, each uncovering new truths. In this selection of haunting short stories, Lispector reveals the permeable boundaries between past and present, the real and the surreal, showing ordinary moments to contain the deepest existential truths.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Fiction, Brazil

128 pages, Paperback

Published April 17, 2025

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Alina · Rating 5 out of 5]

'I had to prevent at all costs that analytical tendency, which ended up reducing the world to mere quantitative elements, from affecting me. I had to react. I wanted to see whether the grayness of his words could cloud my twenty-two years and the bright summer afternoon.
I made up my mind, ready to start fighting that very moment.’ (from the story ‘Love’)

I guess you could read this little-over-100-page book in a single afternoon, but I don’t think Lispector’s short stories should be consumed that way. At least not by me. I read one, sometimes two stories at a time, often between work tasks, as a momentary refuge and escape to calm my overactive nerves. Over the past year I’ve found that reading Lispector (both Near to the Wild Heart and The Hour of the Star) manages to both unsettle and soothe me, achieving a kind of golden ratio of what I’m looking for in books at the moment. Lispector also pushes my own ‘analytical tendency’ into unfamiliar, sometimes uncomfortable, always revelatory territories.

While I can’t really compare this selection of short stories to her genuinely miraculous novels, Lispector has yet to disappoint me. She’s really a marvel at packing so much into so few pages.

The interior lives of women is Lispector's exploration ground and a recurring (but certainly not the only) motif in these stories, as we hear from nine women and girls, one female chicken, one man, and one strange chorus of voices in the title story—but more on that below.

***
'The Triumph' – It begins with an intro that—for a brief moment—evoked a sluggish summer morning (‘[a]n arm here, an arm there, crucified by lassitude’) when ‘little by little the day enters [your] body’. But it soon becomes a portrait of a warring couple—or rather of Luísa, a woman waking after an argument with her decidedly mediocre boyfriend, who has left after accusing her of being his ‘anti-muse’. So why does the thought of his return feel like ‘a warm ray of sunshine envelop[ing] her’?

'Jimmy and I' – A woman remembers a self-absorbed past boyfriend and the moment she outgrew him and the roles imposed on her.

'One day, he asked me why I'd been acting so differently. I answered lightheartedly, employing terms from Hegel, heard from the mouth of my examiner. I told him that a primitive equilibrium had been disrupted and a new one had formed, with a different basis. Needless to say Jimmy didn't understand any of it, since Hegel was an item at the end of our syllabus and we never got there. I then explained to him that I was madly in love with D— and, in a marvelous stroke of inspiration (I regretted that the examiner couldn't hear me), told him that, in this case, I was incapable of unifying the contradictory elements, making a Hegelian synthesis.
The digression was useless.
Jimmy looked at me blankly and could only ask:
“What about me?”'

What about him, indeed.

'Interrupted Story' – Our lives are made of stories, and we are stories in other people’s lives—sometimes brief, sometimes lingering, sometimes cut short. 'It seems to me that this is the very first hour, but afterward, no more will ever follow.'

'Love' – Oh what to even say about Love. I underlined nearly the entire story. A housewife who has long abandoned her youthful freedom and longings in exchange for the stability of domesticated life reflects on the roots she has chosen:

'Deep down, Ana had always needed to feel the firm root of things. And this is what a home bewilderingly had given her. Through winding paths, she had fallen into a woman's fate, with the surprise of fitting into it as if she had invented it. The man she'd married was a real man, the children she'd had were real children. Her former youth seemed as strange to her as one of life's illnesses. She had gradually emerged from it to discover that one could also live without happiness: abolishing it, she had found a legion of people, previously invisible, who lived the way a person works - with persistence, continuity, joy.'

Then a chance encounter interrupts her carefully ordered life and sends her into a quiet, seismic reckoning. 'How many years would it take for her to grow old again?'

'A Chicken' – A hen narrates what she believes are her final moments before becoming dinner, only to receive an unexpected reprieve and a brief period of reverence. This nameless, ‘stupid, timid and free’ hen reminded me a bit of Sprout, the protagonist in Sun-Mi Hwang’s The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly.

'Happy Birthday' – We see ‘glimpses of truth’ as a family gathers to celebrate the birthday of an 89-year-old matriarch. Zilda, the only daughter among six sons, has borne the weight of caregiving, and her life feels shaped by this sacrifice. The narrative then shifts to the mother, Anita—’mother of them all, powerless in her chair'—silently judging everyone present.

'The Disasters of Sofia' – Here I felt like I met again Joana from ‘Near to the Wild Heart’. Sofia is first nine, then thirteen, then an adult reflecting back—an ‘all-too-clever girl’, disruptive, fascinated with her teacher, and probing the ‘maelstrom within [her]’. She builds stories about herself and others: ’reality is my destiny and that was the thing that painted others.’ We get submerged into her inner world as she confronts and comes to terms with her ‘diabolical innocence’ and ‘all the eager venom we’re born with and that gnaws away at life’ as her hopes for adult redemption falter; she begins to learn how to be loved, yet doubts she can truly love in return.

‘Only much later, after having settled into my body and feeling fundamentally more assured, could I venture out and study a bit; previously, how-ever, I couldn't risk learning, I didn't want to disrupt myself - I was intuitively careful with what I was, since I didn't know what I was, and I vainly cultivated the integrity of innocence.’

'The Message' – A young couple’s consciousnesses at first run parallel, then merge in a kind of shared narration. They grow to resent each other—yet their resentment for the world around them is what binds them, for a time.

'The Fifth Story' – A three-and-a-half-page story about cockroaches, murder, and statues. Won’t say more. You figure out the rest.

'The Burned Sinner and the Harmonious Angels' – Haunting. A woman accused of adultery is about to be burned. A chorus of voices—angels, a priest, the husband, the lover, the guards, the women, the people—speak, overlap, merge. Her own voice conspicuously absent.

‘People: She is the woman who in truth gave herself to no one, and now is completely ours. …
People: May she who is about to die speak.
Priest: Leave her be. I fear from this own who is ours a word that is hers. … Take her death as her word.’

As soon as I began reading I had this urge to start reading this aloud (not loud aloud, more like whispering the words to myself).

'2nd guard: … Under this sky of strangled tranquility, bread may be lacking. but the mystery of achievement never will. For what are we imaginarily watching over? if not the destiny of a heart.'

'Remnants of Carnival' – It packs a rollercoaster of emotion in barely five pages as we follow an eight-year-old girl getting ready and experiencing a carnival for the first time in a costume. Leaves you with a contemplative bittersweet feeling—the way a Lispector book ought to end I guess.

***

Favorites: The Burned Sinner and the Harmonious Angels, Love, Interrupted Story, The Triumph, The Disasters of Sofia, Remnants of Carnival


Rating: 4.5/5

***
PS: I like this new white-and-red-cover series of short Penguin Classics. I’ve read three so far (Calvino's Under The Jaguar Sun, Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, and this one), and I know I’ll pick up more soon. The 11 short stories included in this collection are also included in Lispector's The Complete Stories, also translated by Katrina Dodson. This selection was a great entry point to her short stories, and I'm looking forward to reading more of them.

[Anastasiia Mozghova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lispector is a master of finding words for sensations that are so hard to grasp and even harder to articulate. somehow her stories are both heart-breaking and life-affirming!

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

definitely her most feminist short stories, my favourites are:
- ‘the burned sinner and harmonious angels’ :(“Beware a woman who dreams” the men and the angels talking yet you hear nothing from the mouth of the woman being killed added to the horrific atmosphere)
- ‘jimmy and i’ (“My dear, men are a bunch of animals.” showcased perfectly how men’s egos affect the women around them and how girls learn to coddle it)
-‘disaster of sofia’ (“knew I was being asked to accept this offering from him and his open belly, and to accept the weight of this man.” i interpreted it as a girl who was taken advantage of by an old male and the haunting aftermath that took me a little while to get through it was so raw).
Lispector is a genius even within a 10 page story she leaves me speechless.

[nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.5 rounded up

"𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘪𝘳𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢 𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘨𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘣𝘺 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵."

Coming to this after seeing the recent film adaptation of The Passion According to GH.

Since the completed stories is a brick of a book I’ll perhaps get to later in my lifetime, this curation offers bite-sized whimsies of Lispetor’s usual witchy mysticism on conveyance of life and language, love, and the pursuit of proper being, whatever proper may mean. And as the days dwindle down to the new year, I’ve been thinking about what has properly worked for me. What loves have properly formed this self that is God’s constant work. What do I have to offer? And have my offerings meant anything to anyone?

The first stories lay down a thin strip of Lispector’s oddity, and the last few stories pack the punch, delivering the theses to her larger works, with The Apple in the Dark and An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures in mind.

Perfect for anyone wanting to start Lispector but is intimidated by her work. This is a small peace offering of understanding, one of her own existentialism and one that she lightly invites you into.

[Defne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beyond honoured to be the 7th person writing a review for this (my greatest accomplishment). An overtly feminist book of short stories that seemed distinct from Lispector’s usual style at first, but thematically very similar to her other works, answering the question of how one might come to exist through the gaze of another (“And then I, a little woman of eight, felt for the rest of the night that someone finally recognized me: I was indeed, a rose.”)

Throughout the collection we’re introduced to women whose endurance and resilience are highlighted, virtues which appear more feminine than ‘strength’. In a way, they are consumed by their endurance, their resilience rendering them invisible and their suffering quiet, their artistic pursuits transforming into domestic duties like in the story “Love” (“And nourished life anonymously. that is what she had wanted and chosen”). Womanhood in these stories is portrayed as being in servitude, and many of the characters in these stories see servitude as control - the familiar story of quiet superiority that us women have been telling ourselves and each other since the beginning of time.

[makayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

clarice my muse

[Eva Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haven’t read prose this good in ages, even in translation she captures thoughts and feelings otherwise unnamable

[Leena · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first book by Lispector and her writing feels like a warm breeze. The short stories were rich with girlhood and womanhood. I did find them hard to follow at times, but still enjoyed it.

[mari · Rating 5 out of 5]

said it before i’ll say it again: i love rereading clarice and the title story is one of my favorites of hers.

this has made me want to read her biography this year finally

[Al Ridwan · Rating 5 out of 5]

huração. how the fuck did you do all this, clarice?

[tima · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘The idea that I was being happy filled me so much that I had to do something, perform some act of kindness, in order not to feel guilty.’

‘She, so full of dignity, so ironic and sure of herself, would beg him to stay, with such pallor and madness in her face, that he’d given in every other time. And happiness would flood her, so intense and bright, that it compensated for what she’d never imagine was a humiliation.’

[hanawesternberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

do i remember anything about this book? not really.

do i understand it? not really either.

but did i get the metaphorical chaos, the existential weirdness, the divine randomness that floats in every single short story? yeah, i think i did.

reading clarice lispector feels like standing in a dream — disoriented but somehow exactly where you’re meant to be. her writing doesn’t hand you meaning; it makes you feel it, in strange, slippery ways. nothing is direct. everything is drenched in feeling, in silence, in mystery.

this isn’t a book you read for plot. it’s a book you absorb. and then it stays with you like a strange aftertaste you can’t quite name.

will i reread it? maybe. will i pretend i understood it on the first go? absolutely not. but something in it cracked open a little part of me — and that’s more than enough.

[BattlecatReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time for another unpopular opinion! I do like to read short stories by an author to see if I get on with their style and this little book in the wonderful Penguin Archives Series was a good insight into the revered Clarice Lispector. I do not think she is for me. The stories are beautifully written but have an intense emotionality about them that I can not really connect with. Everything is about VERY big feelings, like a toddler almost, experiencing things for the first time with no regulation. Sounds great in theory, but looks very overwhelming in real life.
My favourite story was probably the bizarre titular piece, written as a play? A woman that cheated on her husband is about to be burned at the stake and doesn’t speak while her husband, her lover, the church and the town all have something to say. That was funny and artsy and I enjoyed it. (Side note: I like plays with fun stage directions etc so they give you something when you read them that is very different from when you see a play. Dürenmatt had some FUN stuff that made me enjoy his works in school.)
Glad I tried, glad to report that technically it’s well written and all, glad to say no thanks for now.

[victoria marie]

stories included:

The Triumph
Jimmy and I
Interrupted Story
Love
A Chicken
Happy Birthday
The Disasters of Sofia
The Message
The Fifth Story
The Burned Sinner and the Harmonious Angels
Remnants of Carnival

*

Cordélia stared at her in alarm. The mute and severe fist on the table was telling the unhappy daughter-in-law she irremediably loved perhaps for the last time:

You must know. You must know. That life is short. That life is short.

Yet she didn't repeat it anymore. Because truth was a glimpse. Cordélia stared at her in terror. And, for the very last time, she never repeated it—

(48)

[stefania · Rating 4 out of 5]

might’ve cured my short story distaste !

[Hannah]

I’m assuming these stories are taken from the NDP complete short stories that I’ve read (I remember several of them) but I love this pocket sized edition that contains a perfect collection of Clarice’s short work. ‘Interrupted Story’ will always be one of my favorites. She’s able to say so much yet so little all at once, nothing’s better.

[Vertika · Rating 4 out of 5]

loving everything lispector is writing

[Chanel Chapters · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eat your chickens and petrify the cockroaches
2.75

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as I enjoyed her writing I just don’t think short stories are for me. I will definitely read more from this author as I love the way she writes.

[Tess Barthelemy · Rating 3 out of 5]

« Why do you have those long nails ? To wrest you from death and pluck out your deadly thorns, answers the wolf of man. Why do you have that cruel, hungering mouth? To bite you and blow so I don’t hurt you too much, my love, since I must hurt you, I am the inevitable wolf because life was given me. Why do you have those hands that sting and clutch ? So we can hold hands, for I need it so much, so much, so much »

[Maud · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noen av fortellingene var morsomme og gode, men tror generelt ikke jeg er en stor fan av novellesamlinger.

[AP]

👍

[alicja · Rating 5 out of 5]

felt feminine

[adiasty c · Rating 4 out of 5]

“…I went running, running to never ever stop, the profound prayer isn’t the one that asks, the most profound prayer is the one that no longer asks – I went running, running in such fright.”

a plate, selected and full of permeabilities
my third lispector and she keeps taking my breath away

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars- the short story 'The Message' is honestly a masterpiece ✨️

[nuala · Rating 5 out of 5]

each and every story in this collection was beautiful and strange and weird but the titular story had my jaw dropped in awe

[Vika]

Many sticky notes tabbed and many sentences underlines ❣️

[Brianna Borg-smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first Lispector! I particularly loved ‘The Triumph’, ‘Love’, ‘A Chicken’ and ‘The Fifth Story’. Sadly many of the others I couldn’t finish because they just didn’t hold my attention (that might be a me problem)… But, I love the way she writes and I’m excited to read her novels.

[Julia ✩ · Rating 4 out of 5]

love love love

[Chris Navas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lispector consistently ceases to amaze me. She touches greatness at points and then lingers in the confusion of a moment rather than a derivative of a scenario, making me personally ejected into a mind that knows no bounds beyond excessive contemplation and detail. Her words while yes, are beautiful, lack meaning and are full of diction that attempts to paint a picture of life subjected to incessant tragedy.

One key thing that kept throwing me off were the attempts to solidify the principle that repetition legitmizes or attaches meaning to certain passages. When these repetitions are looked into further you find that not much is found but a drive towards aesthetics rather than something profound, which it is so desperately dressed as. Some dogmatic and allusion filled passage of catharsis.

I did enjoy some stories in here, hence the 3 stars, but Lispector really does make me believe that some short stories deserve to be shorter.