Bestiary

A collection of masterful short stories in Julio Cortazar's sophistocated, powerful and gripping style.

'Julio Cortázar is truly a sorcerer and the best of him is here, in these hilariously fraught and almost eerily affecting stories' Kevin Barry

A grieving family home becomes the site of a terrifying invasion. A frustrated love triangle, brought together by a plundered Aztec idol, spills over into brutality. A lodger’s inability to stop vomiting bunny rabbits inspires a personal confession.

As dream melds into reality, and reality melts into nightmare, one constant remains throughout these thirty-five stories: the singular brilliance of Julio Cortazar’s imagination.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY KEVIN BARRY

‘Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed’ Pablo Neruda

Julio Cortazar lived in Buenos Aires for the first thirty years of his life, and after that in Paris. His stories, written under the dual influence of the English masters of the uncanny and of French surrealism, are extraordinary inventions, just this side of nightmare. In later life Cortazar became a passionate advocate for human rights and a persistent critic of the military dictatorships in Latin America. He died in 1984.