From Julio: Selected Letters of Julio Cortázar, Volume One (1937-1966)

A collection of letters by one of the greatest writers of the last hundred years, From Julio spans nearly three decades of Cortázar's life.

"He was, perhaps without trying, the Argentine who made the whole world love him."
— Gabriel García Márquez

Julio Cortázar's extraordinary novels and short stories changed the course of 20th-century literature. In this first volume of letters, readers will find Cortázar, candid and mischievous, describing his life, reflecting on art, and practically bouncing with questions for his interlocutors. These letters reflect a warm spirit coupled with a uniquely inventive and daring mind. They traverse Cortázar's move from Argentina to Paris, his love affair and the first years of a lifelong friendship with Edith Aron (the inspiration for La Maga in Hopscotch), his romance and marriage to Aurora Bernárdez, his friendships with artists from Alejandra Pizarnik to Luis Buñuel to Mario Vargas Llosa. In letters to his translators and fellow cronopios, Cortázar gives insights into the creation of his early work and describes his reactions to the poems and novels that inspired him. Passionate and tremendously generous, Cortázar's high tempo prose is bound to delight readers, from the most devoted of devotees to burgeoning bibliophiles who have not yet discovered Cortázar's fiction.