Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar (1914-1984), Argentine writer, known for his highly experimental literary style. Born in Brussels, Belgium, to Argentine parents, he was raised and educated primarily in Argentina. In 1951 Cortázar moved from Argentina to Paris, France, primarily because he disapproved of the government of Juan Perón.

Much of Cortázar’s writing is a surrealist depiction of the outside world as a phantasmic maze from which one must escape; his stories are often marked by characters and situations that move or change from one state of being or reality to another. One of his earliest works, Los reyes (The Kings, 1949), is a prose poem dealing with the legend of the Minotaur, a mythic Greek monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man, who was doomed to spend his life in a labyrinth. The labyrinth theme continues in Cortázar’s Los Premios (1960; The Winners, 1965), a novel about a nightmarish cruise won by a group of lottery players. Cortázar’s best-known novel, Rayuela (1963; Hopscotch, 1966), attracted worldwide attention for its narrative structure; the novel allows the reader to “hopscotch” about its erratically arranged chapters, rearranging them at will and, in a sense, sharing in the creation of the novel. Unlike Cortázar’s other novels, an overtly political, humanist theme marks Libro de Manuel (1973; A Manual for Manuel, 1978).

Cortázar is perhaps best known for his many short stories, which have been widely anthologized. Their characteristic element of fantasy is often attributed to the influence of his compatriot, Jorge Luis Borges. Stories from the three collections Bestario (1951), Final del juego (1956), and Las armas secretas (1959), were collected and translated into English in The End of the Game, and Other Stories (1967). Cortázar’s other works include Todos los fuegos el fuego (1966; All Fires the Fire and Other Stories, 1973) and Un tal Lucas (1979; A Certain Lucas, 1984).