The Apple in the Dark

The Apple in the Dark is Lispector's first novel to ever be translated into English. Translated and introduced by Gregory Rabassa, arguably the most important translator of South American literature into English of the second half of the twentieth century. This novel is both a reflection of the Brazillian literary climate of modernism and innovation and of Lispector's personal style, introspective and claustrophobic, as Rabassa writes, "closer perhaps to original thought patterns than the language had ever managed to approach before". Lispector was born in Ukraine to a Jewish family who was already en-route to Brazil to escape persecution during the Russian Civil War. Her family history of migration and trauma inform her depiction of emotional turmoil and psychological struggles in much of work. She never touches directly on this history, but instead highlights it through her stream-of-conscious writing style and her preoccupation with clastrophobia. Her work is not optimistic and quite dark. One might say, realistic.