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

Between 1937 and 1966, Julio Cortázar lived in Buenos Aires and then Paris, spent time in Geneva, Havana, Helsinki, Rome, Vienna and beyond. From these varied perches he wrote some of the most important novels and short stories of the 20th century. He also dispatched frequent letters and doodles to his friends. To read these missives in Sarah Moses and Anne McLean’s inspired translations is to hear a furious clacking at the keys, to be caught up in a spontaneous stampede (or rivulet, or sarabande) of thought. It’s also to eavesdrop on a community of significant artists. Cortázar wrote to Victoria Ocampo, Octavio Paz, Mario Vargas Llosa, Luis Buñuel, Carlos Fuentes, Alejandra Pizarnik, Jorge Luis Borges––to name them all would require lungs of steel. Throughout, Julio Cortázar responds to his friends’ work with meticulous honesty. His critical interpretations often open onto expansive ideas about the nature of art, or to exhilarating backflips of logic familiar to readers of his fiction.

In a letter to Ana María Barrenachea, Cortázar says a recent letter from her is “like a deep breath, full of sounds and things barely said and found movements . . . like a glass ball, something where reflections and murmurs and life are continually flashing through.” He could have been describing his own sensitive, jubilant writing. Open the book to any page and you’ll find Cortázar’s brilliant mind twinkling out.