Books by Julio Cortazar

Time and death are the dominant themes of this anthology which journeys into the depths of the human psyche.

Poems, essays, and anecdotes accompany stories about a man sinking into the ground, an invisible monster, a woman who hates yawns, and miniature jaguars.

Julio Cortazar and Carol Dunlop hatch a plan: to drive their trusty, red VW van along the much-traveled but seldom-explored stretch of highway between Paris and Marseilles, stopping at every rest stop. Making two stops a day, the trip should take about 30 days. THE AUTONAUTS OF THE COSMOROUTE takes the form of a travelogue, a playfully earnest account of their expedition. In a tone modeled after that of ancient explorers, they record their observations with pseudo-scientific precision. Intermixed with the daily logs are anecdotes about their daily magical minutia, fictional pieces, photographs, and drawings. This book also slowly reveals itself to be a love story. It is the last work that Cortazar--the author of works such as HOPSCOTCH and "Blow Up," which inspired a Michelangelo Antonioni film--published. And five months after the couple finished their journey, Dunlop, many years younger than Cortazar, died unexpectedly.

In the stories here--including Blow Up, on which Antonioni based his film--Cortazar explores the boundary where the everyday meets the mysterious.

A selection of the Argentinian writer's finest short stories encompasses work originally published in Final del juego and Las armas secretas.

A series of short takes carries readers into the mind and life of one man, back out to his trendy world, and--once again--into his life, creating a rounded portrait of an individual.

The masterful Argentinian writer includes nineteen stories penned during the last seven years, tales about a couple's adventurous vacation in Africa, a disturbed man's erotic subway games, and other intriguing activities and situations.

Argentine novelist Julio Cortázar displays his imagination at its most idiosyncratic in this collection of short pieces that fall somewhere between short stories, sketches, and prose poems. The first section, "The Instruction Manual," offers unconventional step-by-step directions for everything from crying to destroying Roman ants. "Unusual Occupations" chronicles the surreal activities of an extended family--they build replicas of guillotines and commandeer the mourning rituals at other families' wakes. "Unstable Stuff" lives up to its title: it is the most miscellaneous batch of writing in the collection. Finally, "Cronopios and Famas," which are Cortázar's names for two invented races (or classes, or species), features these unclassifiable beings in wildly comic vignettes. This is a charming collection from one of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century Latin "boom."

A group of friends find traces of a friend who has disappeared in a city that is both Buenos Aires in the 50's and a city that never was.

Stories from the complexly fertile imagination of the Argentinian writer find fantastic, metaphysical whimsies in apparently subordinate circumstances.

In Cortazar's first novel, two college students undergo a haunting experience in an oddly transformed Buenos Aires the night before their final exam.

An account of the adventures of one Horacio Oliveira in Paris and in Argentina, and in reinvention of the novel itself.

Actual newspaper clippings of jailbreaks, police attacks, torture, and acts of rebellion are interspersed throughout an account of the kidnapping of a Latin American police official headquartered in Paris by Latin American revolutionaries demanding the release of political prisoners.

An incisive study of the recent history of Nicaragua, the revolution, and its impact by the distinguished Argentine author.

Essays by the Argentinian novelest, before and after the Sandinista revolution, celebrate the virtues and openness of the new regime.

The distinguished Argentine author brings his own insight and vision to this play based on the ancient Greek myth about Theseus' deadly encounter with the Minotaur in the labyrinth of Crete.

Daniel Defoe was nearly 60 years old when he published ROBINSON CRUSOE, his first novel, in 1719. The story of an English mariner, sole survivor of a shipwreck, who manages to survive for 28 years on a deserted island in the South Pacific, ROBINSON CRUSOE is a stirring depiction of loneliness and isolation as Crusoe builds a house, teaches himself to grow corn and barley, and bakes bread. The book was based on the true tale of a sailor named Alexander Selkirk, but Defoe inserts his own preoccupations into the story. Long fascinated by travel, questions of identity, and the minutiae of daily life, Defoe makes Crusoe's saga of survival into the story of a man who takes control of his own life and overcomes hardships and difficulties in order not only to survive but to prosper. With the introduction of the faithful Friday, who has been taken prisoner by a band of cannibals, Defoe goes further, and explores the concepts of personal liberty and colonialism. The novel is a perennial favorite, providing not only food for thought but a rousing adventure that has influenced dozens of books, movies, and TV shows. People who have never read the novel and never will are very aware of the existence of Robinson Crusoe and his desert island.

The last anthology of poetry and prose by the distinguished Argentine writer provides a varied exploration of themes.

A series of short takes carries readers into the mind and life of one man, back out to his trendy world, and--once again--into his life, creating a rounded portrait of an individual.

An innovative collection of articles, stories, photographs and fragments, which reflect in their very fragmentation the absurdity of the world and of human life.

"Seven stories from CortGazar's volume Deshoras (see HLAS 48:5600). Useful afterword by Manguel places work in biographical, literary, and political context. Powerful, often fantastic narrations told from different points of view, compellingly translatedby Manguel. Important contribution to CortGazar bibliography in English"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.http://www.loc.gov/hlas/

In settings ranging from the Buenos Aires subway to a luxurious Martinique resort, stories by an Argentinian master blend unsettling suspense, intellectual play, clever fantasy, and intense emotional conflict.

Cortazar's mesmerizing and surreal 1972 novel takes place in "the city"--a nameless European metropolis whose identity is in the eye of the beholder. To one inhabitant, it's Paris, to another it's Barcelona. The beholders, in this case, are an eccentric and oddly-assorted group of bohemians and eccentrics.