Described by Clarice Lispector as 'the best one', this intoxicating portrayal of a man searching for his destiny is her mystical, enigmatic masterpiece.

All I've got is hunger. And that instable way of grasping an apple in the dark-without letting it fall'Martim, believing that he has committed a murder, flees the city and escapes into the night. Wandering through the vastness of nature he arrives, in a state of fear and wonder, at a remote ranch run by two women.

There Martim finds work and, as he labours in the blistering heat of the Brazilian summer, becomes transfigured; remade into something else entirely.

Translated by Benjamin Moser.