Bestiary - Softcover

"The common reality," writes Alberto Manguel in his Introduction, "that attached itself to Cortazar like a second skin - the political struggles, the difficult affairs of the heart, the messy business of literature with its passion for novelty and gossip - will quietly fade, and what will remain is the shining teller of uncanny tales, tales that hold a delicate balance between the unspeakable and that which must be told, between the daily horrors of which we appear to be capable and the magical events with which we are gifted every night in the labyrinthine recesses of the mind." The present volume includes many stories never previously published in English; it aims to provide a fully representative selection of Cortazar's genius as a short story writer, a genius that has been celebrated all over the world since the author's death in 1984.

Julio Cortazar lived in Buenos Aires for the first thirty years of his life, and after that in Paris. His stories, written under the dual influence of the English masters of the uncanny and of French surrealism, are extraordinary inventions, just this side of nightmare. In later life Cortazar became a passionate advocate for human rights and a persistent critic of the military dictatorships in Latin America. He died in 1984.