Narrative
The Obscene Madame D
A obscena senhora D
Hilda Hilst · 1982
Synopsis
Hillé, sixty, has just lost Ehud, the man she loved. She decides to live in the recess under the staircase of her house and to devote her days there to contemplation. She hangs masks at her window, frightens the children, and sometimes hurls insults at the neighbours. Ehud, who called her Madame D, keeps talking to her: he does not understand that she prefers her questions about God, death and the body to common sense, sex and a simple life.
Context
The book appeared in 1982 in São Paulo from Massao Ohno; it was the fifth prose book by its author, who had been settled since the mid-1960s near Campinas. According to a study published in Jales, the D of the title stands for dereliction, and the narrative mixes religiosity and eroticism. The Three Percent blog of the University of Rochester sees in it a fragmentary prose, made of short sentences, lists of insults and mystical passages. The text has been adapted for the theatre, and translated into French in 1997 and then into English in the United States.
Who it is for
Short but dense, in a prose that passes without transition from prayer to insult; the French translation is followed by a short story, Le Chien.
Prizes and reception
Presented by its English publisher as the work of one of the most important and most controversial writers of modern Brazil.
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