A review by docpacey
Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar

4.0

Sometimes you're in the mood for a quirky modernist anti-novel about Argentinian bohemians lurking around Paris listening to jazz, drinking yerba mate, philosophizing and arguing over pseudo-intellectual ideologies. If you're not, well, have no fear, at some point they return to Argentina to run an insane asylum, drink more yerba mate, care for a counting cat in a circus, try to kill each other and yes, drink more yerba mate. Oh yeah, written in 1963, it's also hypertextual, with chapters that 'hopscotch' in a variety of ways that allow the reader to choose whether to read linearly or follow a much much more meandering path.
I have no idea how it could ever have been translated, but i believe the translator won a Pulitzer for doing it. One of those books that demands time, but rewards the reader with stellar passages of brilliant writing.




Q: 5
E: 3
I: 4

QxE= 15 + 4 = 19