The noted Argentinian author’s incomparable elegance shines through these eight stories.—Publishers Weekly
Julio Cortázar: credit: Jerry BauerJulio Cortázar (1914–1984): An Argentine novelist, poet, essayist, and short-story writer, Cortázar was born in Brussels. After moving permanently to France in 1951, he gradually gained recognition as one of this century’s major experimental writers. His works reflect the influence of French surrealism, psychoanalysis, and his love of both photography and jazz, along with a strong commitment to revolutionary Latin American politics.
Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine
Translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver
Translated from the Spanish by Alfred MacAdam
Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa
In this playful and scintillating set of fabulist tales by Argentine master Cortázar, characters are shuffled through shifting realities. Cortázar fans will devour these affecting stories.—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
He was, perhaps without trying, the Argentine who made the whole world love him.—Gabriel Gárcia Marquez
I’m permanently indebted to the work of Cortázar.—Roberto Bolaño
Anyone who doesn’t read Cortázar is doomed.—Pablo Neruda
The noted Argentinian author’s incomparable elegance shines through these eight stories.—Publishers Weekly
As Cortázar stresses throughout his talks, writing is rarely a pursuit of answers but, rather, about investigation—of the self, of one’s work, and of the world at large. The goal of the novel, Cortázar says, is to harmonize its formal and literal questions into a central, destabilizing quandary: ‘Why are things like they are and not otherwise?—The New Yorker
[T]he lectures, at times, do feel cobbled together—but in the best way, in the way of art that thrives in complexity and contradiction. They are made from pieces of Cortázar’s life, his writing, his experiences as a young writer in Argentina and an as exile in Paris, his deep engagement with literature and cinema and politics, and they show the mind of a writer at work, asking questions and unearthing new possibilities.—The Rumpus
Based on the words spoken by Cortázar and his students, the class that he taught appears to be an interesting hybrid of Cortázar as tour guide of his body of work, and as mentor into the broader lessons about the qualities of fiction that resonated most with him.—Culture Trip
The consequent lectures—originally delivered in Spanish and translated adeptly by Katherine Silver—are erudite, intimate, charmingly fragmented, and anecdotal, covering a range of topics, from “Eroticism and Literature” to “The Realistic Short Story.”—Dustin Illingworth, The Atlantic
He was, perhaps without trying, the Argentine who made the whole world love him.—Gabriel García Márquez
A first-class literary imagination.—The New York Times
Anyone who doesn’t read Cortázar is doomed.—Pablo Neruda
This book is a golden nettle.—Christian Science Monitor
I’m permanently indebted to the work of Cortázar.—Roberto Bolaño
Deeply touching, enjoyable, beautifully written and fascinatingly mysterious.—The New York Times
Anyone who doesn’t read Cortázar is doomed.—Pablo Neruda
. . . an ambitious, innovative and revealing book—SFGate
Anyone who doesn’t read Cortázar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder… and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair.—Pablo Neruda
Cortázar breaks open ready-made perceptions by submitting them to surreal perspectives.—TimeOut
