Almost True

Ulisses the talking dog relays the story of a greedy fig tree who teams up with a wicked witch to exploit Edissea and her fellow hens, leading the hens to devise ways to thwart the plan.

Clarice Lispector was born in 1920 to a Jewish family in western Ukraine. As a result of the anti-Semitic violence they endured, the family fled to Brazil in 1922, and Clarice Lispector grew up in Recife. Following the death of her mother when Clarice was nine, she moved to Rio de Janeiro with her father and two sisters, and she went on to study law. With her husband, who worked for the foreign service, she lived in Italy, Switzerland, England, and the United States, until they separated and she returned to Rio in 1959. She died there in 1977. Since her death, Clarice Lispector has earned universal recognition as Brazil’s greatest modern writer.

Benjamin Moser is the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of 2009, and he has translated multiple works of fiction by Lispector, including The Hour of the Star and her Complete Stories. For his work bringing Clarice Lispector to international prominence, he received Brazil’s first State Prize for Cultural Diplomacy. His latest book, Sontag: Her Life and Work, won the Pulitzer Prize.

Carla Irusta is an artist and illustrator. She lives in Curitiba, Brazil.