Clarissa is preparing to throw a party and, along the way, she encounters former lovers, childhood friends, and a suicidal war veteran. Beneath its apparent simplicity, this premise hides a complex structure, in which the past and present intertwine in an intricate narrative game. The author uses the rhythmic cadence of her prose ―which flows like the consciousness of her characters―, time jumps, and different points of view to show that beneath the seemingly orderly world surrounding Clarissa lies an inner chaos. In this novel, Virginia Woolf breaks with traditional British narrative and offers a masterful reflection on the passage of time, feminism, and madness.
Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941) was one of the central figures of 20th-century literary modernism. Daughter of the critic and historian Leslie Stephen, she grew up in a deeply intellectual environment that shaped her education from a very young age. She soon became one of the most influential voices of the so-called Bloomsbury Group, a decisive circle in British cultural renewal, where she developed her interest in feminism, aesthetic experimentation, and new ways of narrating inner experience.
During the 1920s, she founded the publishing house Hogarth Press together with Leonard Woolf, through which she promoted both her own work and that of key authors of her time. Novels such as Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse transformed contemporary narrative through their exploration of consciousness and subjective time. In 1941, after several depressive episodes worsened by the context of World War II in the United Kingdom, she took her own life. Her work remains an essential reference in modern literature.
