![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Indeed, the pall of the degenerative mind hangs over Hilst’s life and work its dark influence pervades The Obscene Madame D (published in Portuguese in 1982, and in English in 2012), a novel narrated by the widow Hillé, who, having sequestered herself to a recess beneath her staircase, reflects on loss, the denial of the body, and the breakdown of the mind. As translator Adam Morris notes in his introduction to With My Dog-Eyes, the latest of her novels to be made available in English, Hilst’s father was a writer and coffee baron who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when Hilst was two years old. Born in 1930 into one of the wealthiest families in Brazil, Hilst was raised in Jaú, a small town not far from S ão Paulo. Her body of work, which includes poetry, plays, and prose, is as wide-ranging as it is defiantly avant-garde, yet, despite the accolades, her writing-and its many controversies-has only recently been introduced to Anglophone readers. By the time of her death, in 2004, Hilda Hilst had garnered fame for the whole of her oeuvre-including Brazil’s most prestigious literary prizes-and notoriety for the filthiness of her final books. ![]()
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