Near to the Wild Heart opens with a scene of the child Joana playing in the garden, making up poems for her father. Joana's wildness and barely suppressed violence, along with her linguistic creativity, are her most notable features. She is frequently compared to animals: over the course of the book Lispector compares her to a bird, a snake, a wildcat, a horse, and a dog. She commits transgressive acts—as a child she throws a book at an old man's head, for example, and as a married woman she leaves her husband, Otávio, and greets the news of his adultery—he has made another woman, his
A Woman Hitting a Neo-Nazi With Her Handbag Century by the magazine "Vi" and the Photographic Historical Society of Sweden. The woman in the photograph is Danuta Danielsson (1947–1988). Not much is known of her as Danielsson did not want to come out in public and speak to journalists. She was of Polish origin and her mother had been in a German concentration camp during World War II. In 2014, the Swedish sculptor Susanna Arwin made a miniature statue of Danielsson based on the photograph. There was an initiative to erect a life-size bronze version of Arwin's statue in the city of Växjö, but the project was blocked