nRich with visions, miraculous horses, and linguistic ecstasy, The Besieged City stars Lucrécia. Clarice Lispectors heroine is a materialistic girl free of the burden of thought: Behold, behold, all of her, terribly physical, one of the objects. nn nThe object--the thing, Lispector once remarked, always fascinated me and in a certain sense destroyed me. In my book The Besieged City I speak indirectly about the mystery of the thing. The thing is a specialized and immobilized animal.n