Julio Cortázar was an Argentine author who profoundly influenced a generation of Latin American writers. Much of his most celebrated work was created in France, where he settled in 1951. His distinctive style and exploration of complex themes continue to captivate readers across the globe.
A collection of masterful short stories in Julio Cortazar's sophistocated, powerful and gripping style. 'Julio Cortazar is truly a sorcerer and the best of him is here, in these hilariously fraught and almost eerily affecting stories' Kevin BarryA grieving family home becomes the site of a terrifying invasion.
The book features a series of eight classes by renowned Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, delivered at UC Berkeley in 1980. These sessions blend personal reflections on his writing journey with insights into literature and the cultural context of his time. Cortázar discusses topics like the writer's path and the nature of the fantastic, offering an intimate glimpse into his creative process and thoughts. This collection serves as an essential resource for those studying Cortázar's work, providing a unique opportunity to engage with the author's ideas directly.
Newly expanded edition of a classic: the first and only collection of Cortazar's poetry to appear in English.
This collection features three seminal works by Julio Cortázar, a pivotal figure in world literature and a key contributor to the Latin American Boom. Published together for the first time, these writings celebrate the centenary of Cortázar's birth, showcasing his innovative narrative style and profound impact on literature.
This genre-blending meta-comic/novella features a unique narrative where notable figures like Julio Cortázar, Susan Sontag, and Octavio Paz embark on a thrilling quest to thwart international bibliocide. The story intertwines their perspectives and artistic passions, showcasing the urgency of preserving literature and culture. With a mix of humor and depth, it explores themes of art's significance and the collective responsibility to protect it. Octavio Paz's call to action encapsulates the urgency of their mission.
With his counter-novel Hopscotch and his unforgettable short stories, Julio Cortazar earned a place among the most innovative authors of the twentieth century.
One of Julio Cortázar's great early novels. 'Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed.'--Pablo Neruda In its characters, themes, and preoccupations, Final Exam prefigures Cortázar's later fictions, including Blow-Up and his masterpiece, Hopscotch. Written in 1950 (just before the fall of Perón's government), it is Cortázar's allegorical, bitter, and melancholy farewell to an Argentina from which he was about to be permanently self-exiled. (Cortázar moved to Paris the following year.) The setting of Final Exam is a surreal Buenos Aires, dark and eerie, where a strange fog has enveloped the city to everyone's bewilderment. Juan and Clara, two students, meet up with their friends Andrés and Stella, as well as a journalist friend they call 'the chronicler.' Juan and Clara are getting ready to take their final exams, but instead of preparing, they wander the city with their friends, encounter strange happenings in the squares and ponder life in cafés. All the while, they are trailed by the mysterious Abel. With its daring typography, its shifts in rhythm as well as in the wildly veering directions of its characters' thoughts and speech, Final Exam breaks new ground in the territory of stream-of-consciousness narrative techniques. It is considered one of Cortázar's best works.
A love story and an irreverent travelogue of elaborate tales and snapshots detailing Julio Cortazar and Carol Dunlop's thirty-three-day voyage on the Paris-Marseilles freeway in 1982.
Cortazar's stories are like small time pieces, where each polished part moves relentlessly on its own particular path, exercising a crucial and perpetual influence on the mechanism as a whole. Moments jerk forward and retract, reflect and refract: an island at noon from an aeroplane - an aeroplane at noon from an island; the living deceiving the dying and also themselves, about death; fatality by fire in an ancient Roman arena and in a modern city apartment. It is a world that is constantly shifting, upsetting our balance and our peace of mind, a world outside of time that provokes a fascination bordering on terror. Cortazar is the master of the form and this celebrated collection houses some of his finest work.
Julio Cortazar's collection features a blend of the ordinary and the mysterious, showcasing tales that delve into unsettling themes. A young girl's summer at a country house with a roaming tiger and a man's grim realization of his fate as a murder victim highlight the collection's unique narratives. Among these stories is "Blow-Up," which inspired a film by Antonioni. Cortazar's masterful storytelling invites readers to navigate the thin line between reality and the uncanny, making this a celebrated work in the realm of short fiction.