Novels
- Hopscotch (1963)
- The Winners (1965)
- 62: A Model Kit (1968)
- Cronopios and Famas (1969)
- A Manual for Manuel (1978)
- Unreasonable Hours (1995)
- Final Exam (2000)
Omnibus
- Hopscotch / Blow-Up / We Love Glenda So Much (2014)
Collections
- End of the Game (1967)
- Blow Up (1968)
- All Fires the Fire (1973)
- A Change of Light (1980)
- We Love Glenda So Much (1981)
- A Certain Lucas (1984)
- Around the Day in Eighty Worlds (1986)
- Nicaraguan Sketches (1989)
- Bestiary (2015)
Non fiction
- Paris (1981)
- Autonauts of the Cosmoroute (2007)
- From the Observatory (2011)
Novels Book Covers
Omnibus Book Covers
Collections Book Covers
Non fiction Book Covers
Julio Cortázar Books Overview
Hopscotch
Horacio Oliveira is an Argentinian writer who lives in Paris with his mistress, La Maga, surrounded by a loose knit circle of bohemian friends who call themselves ‘the Club.’ A child’s death and La Maga’s disappearance put an end to his life of empty pleasures and intellectual acrobatics, and prompt Oliveira to return to Buenos Aires, where he works by turns as a salesman, a keeper of a circus cat which can truly count, and an attendant in an insane asylum. Hopscotch is the dazzling, free wheeling account of Oliveira’s astonishing adventures.
The Winners
The Winners of a state lottery, a cross sec tion of the citizens of Buenos Aires, have received tickets for a mysterious luxury cruise. Summoned to meet in a popular caf and escorted under the cover of darkness to the secret location of their ship, they embark without knowing where they are headed. Within hours the ship stops; the passengers are informed that a disease has bro ken out among the crew and that they will be confined to a small section of the ship . In suspense, the passengers mull over their pasts and the future, form atta chments and suspicions, tell secrets, explore desires. But as some of them merely ac cept their confinement, others are increasingly driven to confront the crew, leading to an outbreak of violence that seems both inevitable and pointless.
62: A Model Kit
Cortazar’s classic 1968 novel about an unnamed European ‘city’ is finally back in print as a New Directions Classic. First published in English in 1972 and long out of print, 62: A Model Kit is Julio Cortazar’s brilliant, intricate blueprint for life in the so called ‘City.’ As one of the main characters, the intellectual Juan, puts it: to one person the City might appear as Paris, to another it might be where one goes upon getting out of bed in Barcelona; to another it might appear as a beer hall in Oslo. This cityscape, as Carlos Fuentes describes it, ‘seems drawn up by the Marx Brothers with an assist from Bela Lugosi!’ It is the meeting place for a wild assortment of bohemians in a novel described by The New York Times as ‘Deeply touching, enjoyable, beautifully written and fascinatingly mysterious.’ Library Journal has said 62: A Model Kit is ‘a highly satisfying work by one of the most extraordinary writers of our time.’
Cronopios and Famas
Cronopios and Famas is one of the best loved books by Julio Cort zar, one of the greatest of Latin American novelists.’The Instruction Manual,’ the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction manual format. ‘Unusual Occupations,’ the second chapter, describes the obsessions and predilections of the narrator’s family, including the lodging of a tiger just one tiger ‘for the sole purpose of seeing the mechanism at work in all its complexity.’ Finally, the ‘Cronopios and Famas‘ section delightfully characterizes, in the words of Carlos Fuentes, ‘those enemies of pomposity, academic rigor mortis and cardboard celebrity a band of literary Marx Brothers.’ As the Saturday Review remarked: ‘Each page of Cronopios and Famas sparkles with vivid satire that goes to the heart of human character and, in the best pieces, to the essence of the human condition.’
Final Exam
Long undiscovered, Final Exam, Julio Cortzar’s first novel published 1986 in Spanish is a major work by this important Argentinian author, now available in English translation for the first time. In its characters, themes, and preoccupations it prefigures Cortzar’s later fictions, including Blow Up and his masterpiece Hopscotch. Written in 1950 just before the fall of Pern’s government, Final Exam is Cortzar’s allegorical, bitter, and melancholy farewell to an Argentina from which he was about to be permanently self exiled. Cortzar 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 at a college called ‘The House’ the Great Books are read aloud there by so called Readers, meet up with their friends Andrs and Stella, as well as a journalist friend they call ‘the chronicler.’ Juan and Clara are getting ready to take their Final Exam, but instead of preparing, they wander the city with their friends, encounter strange happenings in the square, attend concerts, and discuss their lives in cafs. Final Exam is a fascinating literary experiment: with stream of consciousness narrative techniques, radical typographical innovations, and also shifts in rhythm and direction of its characters’ thoughts and speech. Darkly funny and riddled with unresolved ambiguities Final Exam is translated ably here by Alfred MacAdam. It is one of Cortzar’s best works long overdue in English.
Blow Up
A young girl spends her summer vacation in a country house where a tiger roams…
A man reading a mystery finds out too late that he is the murderer’s victim…
In the stories collected here including ‘Blow Up;’ on which Antonioni based his film Julio Cortazar explores the boundary where the everyday meets the mysterious, perhaps even the terrible. This is the most brilliant and celebrated book of short stories by a master of the form.
Around the Day in Eighty Worlds
Winner of a Boston Globe Literary Press Award for design, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds blends 62 pieces with lively photos and illustrations chosen by the author to complement the rich verbal imagery.
Autonauts of the Cosmoroute
Anyone who doesn’t read Cort zar is doomed. Pablo NerudaAutonauts of the Cosmoroute is a love story, an irreverent travelogue of elaborate tales and snapshots detailing Julio Cort zar and Carol Dunlop’s thirty three day voyage on the Paris Marseilles freeway in 1982. Uncovering the freeway s hidden underbelly, they push life and literature to surreal extremes. This shot of sun is a satire on modern travel and the great explorers, and an intimate look at one of the greatest literary spirits of our time. Julio Cort zar 1914 1984 was a true giant of twentieth century Latin American literature. He met and married Carol Dunlop in France in 1982. Anne McLean has translated the work of Carmen Mart n Gaite, Javier Cercas, Ignacio Padilla, Orlando Gonz les Esteva, and Luis Sep lveda, as well as other works of Julio Cort zar.
From the Observatory
‘A daring talent…
. Cort zar is a dazzler.’ San Francisco ChronicleThis lyrical, ethereal text interwoven with Julio Cort zar’s own stunning photos from an abandoned observatory never before translated into English is perhaps Cort zar’s most unconventional work. With a dream logic of its own, the narrative flows from Jaipur to Paris, weaving in glimpses of the unearthly structures of a magical observatory the brainchild of a local sultan with descriptions of the life cycle of the Atlantic eel. Julio Cort zar 1914 1984 is one of the true giants of twentieth century Latin American literature. His previous works include Autonauts of the Cosmoroute, Diary of Andr’s Fava Archipelago Books, Hopscotch, and numerous collections of short stories.
Related Authors