There is a novel that doesn't tell a story, but teaches a way of being in the world. An Apprenticeship or The Book of Delights is this: a long, slow, necessary lesson on love — not the romantic love of happy endings, but the more difficult and truer kind, which asks you to first learn how to exist.

Lóri and Ulysses. She, an elementary school teacher who feels the world with an intensity that frightens her. He, a philosophy professor who loves her enough not to want to possess her. The novel is Lóri's journey towards herself — through the sea, ripe peaches, silence, joy as an act of courage.

Clarice Lispector writes like no other: with prose that is both carnal and mystical, precise and visionary. Every sentence seems written to be re-read. Every page is an exercise in presence.

Feltrinelli edition, in Italian.