Born in Brussels, Belgium in 1914 to Argentine parents, Julio Cortázar returned to Argentina with his family in 1919 and grew up in a suburb of Buenos Aires. He studied languages and philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires but, due to financial pressures, left before completing his degree. He went on to work as a high school teacher and then as a university professor teaching French literature. In 1946 he was arrested for participating in an anti-government demonstration and had to leave his teaching post. Spurred by his dissatisfaction with Juan Peron’s government and offered a scholarship to study in Paris, Cortázar went to France in 1951. He spent the rest of his life there, though he traveled widely and remained involved with Argentinian and Nicaraguan political causes. Cortázar died in Paris in 1984.

One of the foremost writers and intellectuals of the 20th century, Cortázar was a poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. He wrote many volumes of short fiction. Among his best-known stories are “Continuity of Parks,” “Bestiary,” “House Taken Over,” “Blow-Up,” “Axolotl,” “The Night Face Up,” and “The End of the Game.”

In his feature article on Cortázar’s short stories, Chris Power describes how he “enthusiastically seeds his realistic settings […] with impossible invasions of the fantastical and supernatural.