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Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar
Cortázar.jpg
Cortázar photographed by Sara Facio, 1967.
Born August 26, 1914
Ixelles, Belgium
Died 12 February 1984(1984-02-12) (aged 69)
Paris, France
Resting place Cimetière de Montparnasse, Paris
Pen name Julio Denis (in his first two books)
Occupation Writer, Translator
Nationality Argentine, French
Genre Short Story, Poetry, Novel.
Literary movement Latin American Boom
Notable works Hopscotch
Blow-up and Other Stories
Notable awards Prix Médicis (France, 1974), Rubén Darío Order of Cultural Independence (Nicaragua, 1983)

Signature

Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar (American Spanish: [ˈxuljo korˈtasar]; August 26, 1914 – February 12, 1984), was an Argentine novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an entire generation of Spanish-speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.

Julio Cortázar was born on August 26, 1914, in Ixelles, a municipality of Brussels, Belgium. According to biographer Miguel Herráez, his parents, Julio José Cortázar and María Herminia Descotte, were Argentine citizens, and his father was attached to the Argentine diplomatic service in Belgium.

At the time of Cortázar's birth Belgium was occupied by the German troops of Kaiser Wilhelm II. After the irruption of German troops in Belgium, Cortázar and his family moved to Zürich where María Herminia's parents, Victoria Gabel and Louis Descotte (a French National), were waiting in neutral territory. The family group spent the next two years in Switzerland, first in Zürich, then in Geneva, before moving for a short period to Barcelona. The Cortázars settled outside of Buenos Aires by the end of 1919.

Cortázar's father left when Julio was six, and the family had no further contact with him. Cortázar spent most of his childhood in Banfield, a suburb south of Buenos Aires, with his mother and younger sister. The home in Banfield, with its back yard, was a source of inspiration for some of his stories. Despite this, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá on December 4, 1963, he described this period of his life as "full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness." He was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother, who spoke several languages and was a great reader herself, introduced her son to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. In the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, May 1975) he wrote: "I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elves, with a sense of space and time that was different from everybody else's."


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