Along with Gabriel García Márquez (1927-), Carlos Fuentes (1928-) and Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-), Julio Cortázar is commonly considered to be one of the “Big Four” writers of the so-called “Boom” of the Spanish American novel of the late 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, he was in many respects a literary mentor to the other three, all of whom have written – and continue to write – about him with gratitude and admiration (a character from perhaps his greatest novel,
Rayuela[
Hopscotch] (1963), even gets a mention in García Márquez’s
Cien años de soledad[
One Hundred Years of Solitude] (1967)). If his work remains less well known than theirs beyond the Spanish-speaking world, that is perhaps because Cortázar was a less obviously “Americanist” (much less still…
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Citation: Moran, Dominic Paul. "Julio Cortázar". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 May 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1027, accessed 21 November 2024.]
