''One of the hidden geniuses of the twentieth century'' Colm Tóibín''She suddenly leaned toward the mirror and sought the love­liest way to see herself''Lucrécia Neves is vain, unreflective, insolently superficial, almost mute. She may have no inner life at all. As she morphs from small-town girl to worldly wife of a rich man, and her small home town surrenders to the forces of progress, Lucrécia seeks perfection: to be an object, serene, smooth, beyond the burden of words or even thought itself. A book that obsessed its author, The Besieged City is unlike any other work in Lispector''s canon: a story of transformation, of what it means to see and to be seen.