In all that Julio Cortázar ever wrote, be it novel, short story, play, poem, essay, or collage, he pitted all his intelligence, passion, and playful humor against unthinking acceptance of the given, the automatic, and the imposed, and sought to discover and forge a wider, freer, more authentic definition of humanity. The explosive revelation and the tenderness of his texts together with the example of independence and solidarity of the man stand as important examples in Latin-American letters.

Born on 26 August 1914 to Argentinian parents, Julio José Cortázar and María Herminia Descotte de Cortázar, who were in Brussels on a business trip during the German invasion, Cortázar did not travel to Argentina until four years later. When he returned to Europe for good at the age of thirty-seven, his destiny as an essentially Argentinian and Latin-American writer was...