Bestiary

Published in 1951, it marks the Argentine author's debut in short fiction and introduces many of the characteristics that would make his work one of the most influential in 20th-century literature.

The book brings together eight stories in which everyday life is constantly disrupted by an unusual presence. A mysterious force that transforms the mundane into an enigma. From the famous story House Taken Over, in which a familiar house is invaded by something invisible, to Letter to a Young Woman in Paris, in which the fantastic bursts through the most intimate absurdity.

I just remembered the horse-sized sparrows from Sorokin's "The Storm". Everything perfectly normal. A true Russian classic.

The “bestiary” represents the inner creatures, the fears and impulses that inhabit us and manifest without warning. The “fantastic” is simply Reality being Real, without the damned mediation of common sense.

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984), born in Brussels and raised in Argentina, was one of the central figures of the Latin American “boom”. His writing, highly experimental and intellectually rigorous, combines humor, reflection, and a poetic vision of reality. In works such as Hopscotch, All Fires the Fire, and Bestiary, he explored the boundary between the rational and the dreamlike, between order and chaos. Cortázar conceived of literature as a form of knowledge and liberation, capable of revealing what remains hidden in everyday life.