Horacio Oliveira, an Argentine intellectual living in Paris, drifts through a circle of artists and friends called the Serpent Club and loves a Uruguayan woman called La Maga. He later returns to Buenos Aires, where he works in a circus and a madhouse. Cortázar designed the book as a game: the reader can read it straight through or hop between chapters according to a table of instructions, picking up extra chapters labelled expendable along the way.
It is for readers who enjoy experimental fiction and conversation about jazz, philosophy and the search for meaning. The book offers a kind of freedom in the reading itself, and a feel for the restless, bohemian mood of 1950s Paris and Buenos Aires.
Deep, contemplative, open-ended and thought-provoking; a demanding read.
Best for readers like The Wisdom Collector. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2010
- Publisher
- Cátedra
- ISBN
- 9788437604572
- Language
- ES
