El veintiséis de agosto/August 26th
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| Photo from The Paris Review, 1984. Click HERE. |
An Argentinian writer known as a modern master of the short story, though he also wrote poetry, novels, and other works, Cortázar is credited as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom. Born in Brussels in 1914, he and his family returned to Argentina after the war, and he grew up in Banfield, near Buenos Aires. His father left the family soon after they returned in 1919, never to be heard from again. As a child, Cortázar was often sick and spent much time in bed reading the works of Jules Verne. He graduated with a degree in teaching and worked as a schoolteacher through the 1940s, only writing on the side. In 1951 he moved to Paris and began writing in earnest. By the time he died in 1984 at 69 years old, he was widely revered for his writing, and the Madrid newspaper El País published 11 full pages of tributes and farewells over two days. Cortázar became deeply invested in opposing human rights abuses in various Latin American countries, and he gave all the rights and royalties of his novel Los autonautas de la cosmopista, published simultaneously in French and Spanish, to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Though he was banned by the military junta ruling Argentina in the 70s, he did return the country after it returned to democracy, though Argentina's president did not welcome him officially, fearing he was too far to the left.
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