SOURCE: "Moving Snapshots," in The New York Times Book Review, April 10, 1966, p. 1.

Keene is an American educator and critic. Below, he favorably reviews Hopscotch.

The publication last year of Julio Cortázar's allegorical novel The Winners earned respectful reviews. Hopscotch, a far more impressive, indeed superb work should establish Cortázar as an outstanding writer of our day.

In general, Hopscotch is the story of Oliveira, an Argentinian writer living in Paris with La Maga, his mistress, and her child by another man. He falsely suspects she is deceiving him with a friend. After the death of La Maga's child, Oliveira returns to Buenos Aires, working first as a salesman, later as the keeper of a circus cat, finally as an attendant in an insane asylum.

It is difficult to describe the plot of Hopscotch, not because it is confused or vague—on the contrary, it is continuously...