Julio Cortázar

“Letter to a Young Lady in Paris” (Carta a una señorita en París) is a short story by Julio Cortázar that appeared in the book Bestiario (1951). It is narrated in the first person and recounts the experience of a man who has an unusual secret: from time to time, he vomits live baby rabbits. The story is set in Buenos Aires, in the apartment of a woman named Andrée, while she is in Paris. The man writes her a letter telling Andrée about his strange condition and how it has intensified lately to the point of becoming uncontrollable, causing chaos that contrasts with the order that reigned in the apartment before he moved in.

“The Night Face Up” (La noche boca arriba) is a short story by the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, published in 1956 in the collection Final del juego. A man is injured in a motorcycle accident and taken to a hospital. At the same time, in an ancient world, a warrior flees through jungles and marshes during a ritual hunt. Alternating between these two realities, Cortázar creates a subtle tension between the contemporary and the ancestral in a story that disorients the reader and draws them into an uncertain realm where nothing feels entirely safe or familiar.

“Circe” is a short story by Julio Cortázar, published in 1951 as part of the Bestiario collection. Dark rumors surround Delia Mañara, a young woman marked by the tragic deaths of her two former boyfriends. Mario, a neighbor in the neighborhood, decides to defend her from the gossip and begins to visit her, gradually entering the secretive world of the Mañaras. There, Delia attracts him with her unique culinary skills and domestic rituals, while the young man tries to unravel the enigma of a woman who seems to exert a disturbing influence on everything around her.

“The Other Heaven” (El otro cielo) is a short story by Julio Cortázar, published in 1966 in the collection All Fires the Fire (Todos los fuegos el fuego). It tells the story of a man divided between his routine life in 1940s Buenos Aires and an imaginary, twilight Paris made of covered passages and gaslight. While he fulfills the obligations of the present (work, family, stability), Josiane awaits him in that other world—an enigmatic woman with whom he shares a freer, more secret existence, whose intensity threatens to eclipse everything that binds him to his real life.