Julio Cortázar

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. Praise for Blow-Up and Other Stories:"[Cortazar] is a unique storyteller. He can induce the kind of chilling unease that strikes like a sound in the night:" -- Time"Julio Cortazar is a stunning writer. It is difficult to imagine how he could improve as a writer of short stories:" -- The Christian Science Monitor"A glittering showcase for a daring talent.... Julio Cortazar is a dazzler:"-- William Hogan, The San Francisco Chronicle"A first-class literary imagination at work:"-- The New York Times Book Review

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Translated by Gregory Rabassa, 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.