Julio Cortazar

Julio Cortázar was an Argentine novelist, short-story writer, and translator counted among the central figures of the Latin American Boom alongside Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Vargas Llosa. His 1963 novel Hopscotch, which can be read in two different page orders, is regarded as a foundational text of Latin American postmodernism.

Born on August 26, 1914, in Ixelles on the outskirts of Brussels, Belgium, Julio Florencio Cortázar Descotte was the son of Julio José Cortázar, an Argentine commercial attaché posted to the embassy, and María Herminia Descotte. The family returned to Argentina in 1918, settling in Banfield in suburban Buenos Aires, where his father abandoned the household when Cortázar was six.

He trained as a teacher at the Escuela Normal Mariano Acosta in Buenos Aires and taught secondary school in Bolívar, Chivilcoy, and Mendoza during the 1940s while publishing under the pseudonym Julio Denis.

Cortázar moved to Paris in 1951 in opposition to the Perón government and worked as a translator for UNESCO for the rest of his life. He published the short-story collections Bestiario, Final del juego, and Las armas secretas through the 1950s. Hopscotch appeared in 1963, followed by the novels 62: A Model Kit and A Manual for Manuel. He took French citizenship in 1981 and died of leukaemia in Paris on February 12, 1984, aged 69.

His name Julio derives from the Roman family name Julius, of disputed origin but possibly meaning descended from Jupiter. Julio is a common masculine name in Spanish-speaking countries.