Julio Cortazar is an Argentinian who is one of the world's most gifted writers of short stories. Here gathered in one volume are 2 collections of short stories by a master of the form. "Reading Cortazar, we enter a mysterious, passionate, apocalyptic world. His stories are palimpsests, revealing hidden layers of meaning, their creator a spy in the dense, and elusive world of words". The stories are set in Europe and Latin America.