Descripción
«Anti-novel», «chronicle of a madness», «the black hole of an enormous funnel», «a fierce shake by the lapels», «a cry of alert», «a kind of atomic bomb», «a call to necessary disorder», «a gigantic joke», «a babble».
These and other expressions were used to refer to Rayuela after its appearance in 1963. Undoubtedly, the publication of the novel shocked the cultural landscape of its time and represented a true revolution in Spanish-language narrative: for the first time, a writer took to its ultimate consequences the desire to transgress the traditional order of a story and the language to tell it.
Full of literary and vital ambition, renewing narrative tools, destroying the established and seeking the root of poetry, it is perhaps the book where Cortázar is whole, with all his ethical and aesthetic complexity, with his imagination and his humor. And, more than 5 decades after its first publication, Rayuela continues to be read with curiosity, astonishment, interest and devotion.
Cortázar begins by proposing an active approach to the book and offers several reading possibilities: the reader must decide: opt for the traditional reading order?, follow the direction board?, resort to chance? Then he takes them to two different places: «From that side», Paris, the relationship between Oliveira and La Maga, the snake club, Horacio's first descent into hell; and «From this side», Buenos Aires, the meeting of Traveler and Talita, the circus, the asylum, the second descent.
A journey forward?, a journey backward? An initiatory journey, without a doubt, from which the reader emerges perhaps with another idea about how to read books and how to see life. A mosaic where an entire era was wonderfully reflected.
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
Winner of the National Book Award for Translation, 1967
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, freewheeling account of Oliveira's astonishing adventures.Author: Julio Cortázar
Publisher: Debolsillo
Published: 04/24/2018
Pages: 736
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 7.40h x 4.90w x 1.50d
ISBN13: 9788466331906
ISBN10: 8466331905
Language: Spanish
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Literary
About the Author
Nacido en Bruselas en 1914, durante una estancia temporal de sus padres en esa ciudad, Julio Cortázar es uno de los escritores argentinos más importantes de todos los tiempos. Realizó estudios de Letras y de Magisterio y trabajó como docente en varias ciudades del interior de Argentina. En 1951 fijó su residencia definitiva en París, desde donde desarrolló una obra literaria única dentro de la lengua castellana. Algunos de sus cuentos se encuentran entre los más perfectos del género. Su novela Rayuela conmocionó el panorama cultural de su tiempo y marcó un hito insoslayable dentro de la narrativa contemporánea. Cortázar murió en París en 1984.