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New Books

By Benjamin Moser

I don’t imagine many readers bother to peruse the acknowledgments section of a biography, that laundry list of copyright holders, helpful archivists, encouraging spouses, and generous foundations without whom the work would never have seen the light of day, and none of whom bear any blame for the work’s eventual flaws, responsibility for which, the writer modestly emphasizes, is entirely his own.

But when I recently had occasion to acknowledge everyone who helped with my biography of Clarice Lispector, I realized that those few pages contained the kernel of an entirely new book, one that would tell of my adventures in creating it, including my acquisition of a never-before-seen manuscript in exchange for a bagful of the highest quality Dutch skunk seeds, destined for a back yard in Rio de Janeiro.

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SEE ALSO: Camus, Albert; Biography; Camus, a romance (Book); Hawes, Elizabeth; Pfeijffer, Ilja Leonard; In the sanctuary of outcasts (Book); It's our turn to eat: the story of a Kenyan whistle-blower (Book); Wrong, Michela; White, Neil; Pictorial works; Rupert: a confession (Book)

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