A new edition of a classic Julio Cortázar novel, long out of print, this is an amazing rediscovery: “Short takes of whimsy and surrealism, the tidbits here are like diamond chips” (Kirkus Reviews)
A kaleidoscopic novel by Julio Cortázar, A Certain Lucas contains a series of brilliant, eccentrically interlocking pieces, by turns comic, philosophical, allusive, and always a pleasure to read. In short takes, we are plunged directly into the life of Lucas, learning about his patriotism, his friends (“a list of cronies large and varied”), his shopping routines (always in his pajamas), his favorite pianists, his battles with the Hydra (“now that he’s growing old he realizes it’s not easy to kill it”). His world is described in multiple quick parodies, with hilarious evocations of the latest trends: physical fitness, semiotics, cool pornography, and animal ESP. We are given glimpses and ultimately offered a strange, yet rounded portrait of a complete man, but not just any man . . . This is a certain Lucas.
20th century Argentine novelist, poet, essayist, short-story writer and Surrealist
I’m permanently indebted to the work of Cortázar.
— Roberto Bolaño
Anyone who doesn’t read Cortázar is doomed.
— Pablo Neruda
He was, perhaps without trying, the Argentine who made the whole world love him.
— Gabriel García Márquez
Readers will find in this book Cortázar in all his splendor: absurdity, magical realism, playfulness, an eccentric character, and mazes that turn you around and surprise even the most attentive of readers.
— Miranda Mazariegos, Americas Quarterly
Cortazar was devoted to flattening the high and low within his stories and cresting the truly fantastic: a classless world in which all suffer equally.
