Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar is a groundbreaking, experimental novel that follows writer Horacio Oliveira as he drifts through Paris and Buenos Aires in search of meaning, love, and his missing muse. The book can be read in multiple sequences, reflecting its playful, philosophical, and unconventional structure.
Hopscotch can be read in multiple sequences. Julio Cortázar designed Hopscotch with two official reading paths:
1. The “normal” linear reading
You read chapters 1–56 straight through.
This gives you a complete, coherent story.
2. The “hopscotch” reading
You follow a nonlinear chapter sequence suggested by Cortázar, which jumps around the book — including the “expendable chapters” (57–155).
This creates a more experimental, philosophical, and fragmented experience.
Inside the novel, the protagonist Horacio Oliveira and his friends discuss literature, structure, and the idea of nonlinear storytelling. That metafictional element sometimes makes readers wonder whether the characters are writing a book that can be read out of order.
But the truth is simpler:
👉 Cortázar structured the real novel to be read in multiple ways.
👉 The characters’ discussions echo that experimental spirit, but they aren’t writing the book you’re reading.
MEDIA REVIEWS
Cortazar's masterpiece. This is the first great novel of Spanish America - Times Literary Supplement
One of the great existentialist novels, worthy to stand alongside the efforts of Sartre and Camus - LA Review of Books
Marks the true possibility of encounter between the Latin–American imagination and the contemporary world
Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed - Pablo Neruda
I'm permanently indebted to the work of Cortázar - Roberto Bolaño
Hopscotch : the Argentine-French Nobelist's extraordinary novel
€13.90
The Argentine-French Nobelist's extraordinary novel about a writer hunting down his muse around Paris and Buenos Aires and his chance encounter with an author he adores is a masterpiece of literary invention and playfulness.
Julio Cortazar's crazed masterpiece, the forbearer of the Latin Boom in the 1960s - published in Vintage Classics for the first time.
Dazed by the disappearance of his muse, Argentinian writer Horatio Oliveira wanders the bridges of Paris, the sounds of jazz and the talk of literature, life and art echoing around him. But a chance encounter with a literary idol and his new work – a novel that can be read in random order – sends Horatio’s mind into further confusion.
As a return to Buenos Aires beckons, Horatio’s friend and fellow artist, Traveler, awaits his arrival with dread –the lives of these two young writers now ready to play out in an inexhaustible game of indeterminacy.
Read more about "hopscotch" reading in Product description below.
Product Information
- Author: Julio Cortazar
- Language: Angļu valoda
- Year of publication: 2020
- Manufacturer: Vintage Publishing
- Cover type: Soft cover
- Number of pages: 576
- ISBN code: 9781784875862
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