
The Passion According to G.H.
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Sofia Willingham
About this listen
Lispector’s most shocking novel.
The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector’s mystical novel of 1964, concerns a well-to-do Rio sculptress, G.H., who enters her maid’s room, sees a cockroach crawling out of the wardrobe, and, panicking, slams the door - crushing the cockroach - and then watches it die. At the end of the novel, at the height of a spiritual crisis, comes the most famous and most genuinely shocking scene in Brazilian literature....
Lispector wrote that of all her works, this novel was the one that "best corresponded to her demands as a writer."
©2012 New Directions (P)2017 TalkingBook
Featured Article: The top 100 classics of all time
Before we whipped out our old high school syllabi and dug deep into our libraries to start selecting contenders for this list, we first had to answer the question, "How do we define a classic?" The answer isn’t as straightforward as you might guess, though there’s a lot to be said for the old adage, "You know it when you see it" (or, in this case, hear it). Of course, most critically, each of our picks had to be fabulous in audio. So dust off your aspirational listening list—we have some amazing additions you don’t want to miss.
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Complete Stories
- By: Clarice Lispector, Katrina Dodson, Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 22 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here, gathered in one volume, are the stories that made Clarice a Brazilian legend. Originally a cloth edition of 86 stories, now we have 89 in all, covering her whole amazing career, from her teenage years to her deathbed. In these pages, we meet teenagers becoming aware of their sexual and artistic powers, humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies, old people who don't know what to do with themselves - and in their stories, Clarice takes us through their lives - and hers - and ours.
-
-
Wonderful Collection
- By XX on 04-25-20
By: Clarice Lispector, and others
-
Água Viva (New Directions Books)
- By: Clarice Lispector
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Liang
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A meditation on the nature of life and time, Água Viva (1973) shows Lispector discovering a new means of writing about herself, more deeply transforming her individual experience into a universal poetry. In a body of work as emotionally powerful, formally innovative, and philosophically profound as Clarice Lispector’s, Água Viva stands out as a particular triumph.
-
-
Occasionally sublime, frequently not her best
- By Robert Lynch on 01-20-23
-
Near to the Wild Heart
- By: Clarice Lispector
- Narrated by: Rebecca Morris
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This new translation of Clarice Lispector's sensational first book tells the story of a middle class woman's life from childhood through an unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence. Near to the Wild Heart, published in Rio de Janeiro in 1943, introduced Brazil to what one writer called "Hurricane Clarice": a 23-year-old girl who wrote her first book in a tiny rented room and then baptized it with a title taken from Joyce.
-
-
AMAZING!
- By Gordy on 04-11-18
-
The Hour of the Star
- New Directions Paperbook
- By: Clarice Lispector
- Narrated by: Melissa Broder
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector's consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece. Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S. M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Colas, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly, and unloved.
-
-
audio ruins a great book
- By Ella Mc on 08-22-19
-
Too Much of Life
- The Complete Crônicas
- By: Clarice Lispector
- Narrated by: Roxanne Hernandez
- Length: 23 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The crônica, a literary genre peculiar to Brazilian newspapers, allows writers, or even soccer stars, to address a wide readership on any theme they like. Chatty, mystical, intimate, flirtatious, and revelatory, Clarice Lispector’s pieces for the Saturday edition of Rio’s leading paper, the Jornal do Brasil, from 1967 to 1973, take the forms of memories, essays, aphorisms, and serialized stories. Endlessly delightful, her insights make one sit up and think, whether about children or social ills or pets or society women or the business of writing or love.
-
Leaving the Atocha Station
- By: Ben Lerner
- Narrated by: Ben Lerner
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his relationship to art. Instead of following the dictates of his fellowship, Adam's 'research' becomes a meditation on the possibility of the genuine in the arts and beyond: are his relationships with the people he meets in Spain as fraudulent as he fears his poems are? Is poetry an essential art form, or merely a screen for the reader's projections?
-
-
Insightful, beautiful
- By Rochelle on 12-09-14
By: Ben Lerner
-
The Complete Stories
- By: Clarice Lispector, Katrina Dodson, Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 22 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here, gathered in one volume, are the stories that made Clarice a Brazilian legend. Originally a cloth edition of 86 stories, now we have 89 in all, covering her whole amazing career, from her teenage years to her deathbed. In these pages, we meet teenagers becoming aware of their sexual and artistic powers, humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies, old people who don't know what to do with themselves - and in their stories, Clarice takes us through their lives - and hers - and ours.
-
-
Wonderful Collection
- By XX on 04-25-20
By: Clarice Lispector, and others
-
Água Viva (New Directions Books)
- By: Clarice Lispector
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Liang
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A meditation on the nature of life and time, Água Viva (1973) shows Lispector discovering a new means of writing about herself, more deeply transforming her individual experience into a universal poetry. In a body of work as emotionally powerful, formally innovative, and philosophically profound as Clarice Lispector’s, Água Viva stands out as a particular triumph.
-
-
Occasionally sublime, frequently not her best
- By Robert Lynch on 01-20-23
-
Near to the Wild Heart
- By: Clarice Lispector
- Narrated by: Rebecca Morris
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This new translation of Clarice Lispector's sensational first book tells the story of a middle class woman's life from childhood through an unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence. Near to the Wild Heart, published in Rio de Janeiro in 1943, introduced Brazil to what one writer called "Hurricane Clarice": a 23-year-old girl who wrote her first book in a tiny rented room and then baptized it with a title taken from Joyce.
-
-
AMAZING!
- By Gordy on 04-11-18
-
The Hour of the Star
- New Directions Paperbook
- By: Clarice Lispector
- Narrated by: Melissa Broder
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector's consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece. Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S. M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Colas, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly, and unloved.
-
-
audio ruins a great book
- By Ella Mc on 08-22-19
-
Too Much of Life
- The Complete Crônicas
- By: Clarice Lispector
- Narrated by: Roxanne Hernandez
- Length: 23 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The crônica, a literary genre peculiar to Brazilian newspapers, allows writers, or even soccer stars, to address a wide readership on any theme they like. Chatty, mystical, intimate, flirtatious, and revelatory, Clarice Lispector’s pieces for the Saturday edition of Rio’s leading paper, the Jornal do Brasil, from 1967 to 1973, take the forms of memories, essays, aphorisms, and serialized stories. Endlessly delightful, her insights make one sit up and think, whether about children or social ills or pets or society women or the business of writing or love.
-
Leaving the Atocha Station
- By: Ben Lerner
- Narrated by: Ben Lerner
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his relationship to art. Instead of following the dictates of his fellowship, Adam's 'research' becomes a meditation on the possibility of the genuine in the arts and beyond: are his relationships with the people he meets in Spain as fraudulent as he fears his poems are? Is poetry an essential art form, or merely a screen for the reader's projections?
-
-
Insightful, beautiful
- By Rochelle on 12-09-14
By: Ben Lerner
-
Satantango
- By: László Krasznahorkai
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Satantango, the novel that inspired Béla Tarr’s classic film, is proof that the devil has all the good times. Set in an isolated hamlet, the novel unfolds over the course of a few rain-soaked days. Only a dozen inhabitants remain in the bleak village, rank with the stench of failed schemes, betrayals, failure, infidelity, sudden hopes, and aborted dreams. “Their world,” in the words of the translator George Szirtes is “rough and ready, lost somewhere between the cosmic and tragic, in one small insignificant corner of the cosmos. Theirs is the dance of death.”
-
-
Tone. Sound. Psychology. Humor.
- By Anonymous User on 12-19-23
-
Being and Nothingness
- By: Jean-Paul Sartre
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 38 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1943, Jean-Paul Sartre published his masterpiece, Being and Nothingness, and laid the foundation of his legacy as one of the greatest twentieth century philosophers. A brilliant and radical account of the human condition, Being and Nothingness explores what gives our lives significance. In a new and more accessible translation, this foundational text argues that we alone create our values and our existence is characterized by freedom and the inescapability of choice.
-
-
One of my all time favorite books
- By M.Biblioswine on 03-06-25
By: Jean-Paul Sartre
-
Outline
- The Outline Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Kate Lock
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking - about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives. Outline is a novel in 10 conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens.
-
-
Difficult and Better in Print
- By Nick O. on 07-18-23
By: Rachel Cusk
-
The Book of Disquiet
- By: Fernando Pessoa
- Narrated by: Adam Sims
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Assembled from notes and jottings left unpublished at the time of the author’s death, The Book of Disquiet is a collection of aphoristic prose-poetry musings on dreams, solitude, time and memory. Credited to Pessoa’s alter ego, Bernardo Soares, who chronicles his contemplations in this so-called "factless" autobiography, the work is a journey of one man’s soul and, by extension, of all human souls that allow their minds and hearts to roam far and free.
-
-
The book that saved my life
- By Hutchinson on 03-09-21
By: Fernando Pessoa
-
Nausea (New Directions Paperbook)
- By: Jean-Paul Sartre
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sartre's greatest novel and existentialism's key text, now introduced by James Wood, and read by the inimitable Edoardo Ballerini. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form, he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.
-
-
Glad to have existed to enjoy reading this book!
- By mohammed on 08-11-21
By: Jean-Paul Sartre
-
My Sweet Orange Tree
- By: José Mauro de Vasconcelos
- Narrated by: Alfred Enoch
- Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Zezé—Brazil’s naughtiest and most loveable boy, his talent for mischief matched only by his great kindness. When he grows up he wants to be a ‘poet with a bow-tie’, but for now he entertains himself playing pranks on the residents of his family’s poor Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood and inventing friends to play with. That is, until he meets a real friend, and his life begins to change.
-
-
Worth your time!
- By Mama D. on 02-05-25
-
By Night in Chile
- By: Roberto Bolaño, Chris Andrews - translation
- Narrated by: Thom Rivera
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A deathbed confession revolving around Opus Dei and Pinochet, By Night in Chile pours out the self-justifying dark memories of the Jesuit priest Father Urrutia. By Night in Chile's single night-long rant provides a terrifying, clandestine view of the strange bedfellows of church and state in Chile. This wild, eerily compact novel - Roberto Bolaño's first work available in English - recounts the tale of a poor boy who wanted to be a poet but ends up a half-hearted Jesuit priest and conservative literary critic, a sort of lapdog to the rich and powerful cultural elite.
-
-
Dreamscape by a Talented Chilean Writer
- By Tom on 03-01-19
By: Roberto Bolaño, and others
-
The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
- By: Anais Nin
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Lagelee
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Diary of Anaïs Nin is the published version of Anaïs Nin's own private manuscript diary, which she began at age 11 in 1914 during a trip from Europe to New York with her mother and two brothers. Nin would later say she had begun the diary as a letter to her father, Cuban composer Joaquín Nin, who had abandoned the family a few years earlier.
-
-
Beautiful perspective from an incredible woman, surrounded by difficult and incredible men
- By Richard McKown on 12-11-23
By: Anais Nin
-
Simple Passion
- By: Annie Ernaux, Tanya Leslie
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 1 hr and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, an unnamed narrator attempts to plot the emotional and physical course of her two-year relationship with a married foreigner where every word, event, and person either provides a connection with her beloved or is subject to her cold indifference. With courage and exactitude, she seeks the truth behind an existence lived entirely for someone else, and, in the pieces of its aftermath, she is able to find it.
-
-
Pulitzer Prize Winner
- By Kimberly on 10-17-22
By: Annie Ernaux, and others
-
The Lover
- By: Marguerite Duras
- Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
- Length: 3 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the prewar Indochina of Marguerite Duras's childhood, this is the haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover. In spare yet luminous prose, Duras evokes life on the margins of Saigon in the waning days of France's colonial empire, and its representation in the passionate relationship between two unforgettable outcasts.
-
-
Beautiful, Sparse, Classic
- By Marc Bonagura on 06-13-25
By: Marguerite Duras
-
Play It as It Lays
- A Novel (FSG Classics)
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the listener. Set in a place beyond good and evil—literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul—it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis.
-
-
Didion is a genius
- By Rogue415 on 04-09-25
By: Joan Didion
-
On the Calculation of Volume, Book II
- By: Solvej Balle
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Liang
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first year of November eighteenth is coming to a close, and Tara Selter has returned to her hotel room in Paris, the place where it all began. As if perched at the edge of a precipice, she readies herself to leap into November nineteenth. Book II of Solvej Balle’s astounding seven-part series On the Calculation of Volume beautifully expands on the speculative premise of Book I, drawing us further into the maze of time, where space yawns open, as if suddenly gaining a new dimension, extending into ever more fined-grained textures.
-
-
Story loses momentum in Book II
- By elebras on 07-02-25
By: Solvej Balle
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Passion According to G.H.?
"And it is no use to try to take a shortcut and want to start, already knowing that the voice says so little, starting straightaway with being depersonal. For the journey exists, and the journey is not simply a manner of going. We ourselves are the journey. In the matter of the living, one can never arrive beforehand. The via crucis is not a detour, it is the only way, one cannot arrive except along it and with it. Persistence is our effort, giving up is the reward. One only reaches it having experienced the power of building, and, despite the taste of power, preferring to give up."Have you listened to any of Sofia Willingham’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I loved her delivery in Anais Nin's Little Birds which convinced me to give this a try as well. I'm very glad I did. She did a fantastic job!Any additional comments?
Truly unforgettable
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Also quite delicious is the manner in which she explores spirituality. Clarice recreates Catholic ritual in her own image and alters Biblical passages and phrases as she sees fit, occasionally subverting the intended meaning of the canonical texts she repurposes. For instance, she says "My Kingdom IS of this world", whereas in the Gospels Christ is quoted as saying "My Kingdom is not of this world". But no knowledge of Christianity is really needed to appreciate the gorgeousness of her craft.
This is one of those books that will become part of my select few that I reread again and again every year.
Mind-blowing Mystical Masterpiece
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
only okay
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Any additional comments?
Sofia Willingham is so amazing. I really loved every moment of this book. I'm going to listen to it again starting tomorrow.Incredible book!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Getting into Lespector
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
So freaking good!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Keep The Lispector Coming!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The aftertaste
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I love Lispector but
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Agonizing listen
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.