Secret weapon

Julio Cortázar (1914‒1984) is an outstanding Argentine writer of the 20th century, along with Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, Mexican Carlos Fuentes, Paraguayan Augusto Roa Bastos, and Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the prominent representatives of Latin American “magic realism”. Among the most famous works are the collections of stories “Out of Time”, “Bestiary”, “Secret Weapon”, “End Game”, “All Fires Are Fire”, the novels “Winnings”, “Class Game”, “62: A Model for Assembling”.

The collection “Secret Weapon” by Julio Cortázar includes some of the most famous masterpieces of the Argentine classic, which, when read carefully, form a single conceptual whole. Their action takes place in Paris, where Cortázar lived for over 30 years. They are marked by the author's thematic and stylistic stamp: these are film stills of the bohemian life of the City of Light, a mixture of reality and fantasy, experimentation with language, poetic prose, subtle psychologism of details. Five philosophical parables, in which intellectual fantasy, magical realism and detective stories are intertwined. Many future masters of fine writing grew up on the works of Julio Cortázar. Gabriel García Márquez admitted that in his youth he dreamed of "when I grow up, learning to write like Julio."