By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘House Taken Over’ is a 1946 short story by the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar (1914-84). In the story, a brother and sister living in a large house in Buenos Aires feel that their house is gradually being taken over by some mysterious intruders. Eventually, they decide they must leave the house.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Distances’ is a short story by the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar (1914-84), published in his 1951 collection Bestiary. In the story, a woman discovers her ‘double’ while dreaming and then, in the real world, exchanges identities with this other woman.
Like many of Julio Cortázar’s short stories, ‘The Distances’ is playful, dense, and difficult – but before we offer an analysis of the story’s meaning and themes, here’s a brief summary of the story’s plot.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Continuity of Parks’ is a 1956 short story by the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar (1914-84). In the story, which is just two pages long, a man reads a novel in which two lovers, a man and a woman, plot the murder of the woman’s husband. At the end of the story, it turns out that, remarkably, the man reading the novel is the husband who is about to be murdered.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Axolotl’ is a short story by the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar (1914-84). The story was published in Cortázar’s 1956 collection End of the Game and Other Stories. ‘Axolotl’ is narrated by a lonely man who regularly visits the local zoo, where he becomes fascinated by the axolotls in the aquarium. In time, he states that he, too, is an axolotl, and feels he has become one of them.