Julio Cortazar is one of the best-known successful Latin American writers. His work has been widely translated and this 1980 book is a clear and detailed study of his four major novels. Steven Boldy recognises the complexity, the ‘nerve centres of contradiction and tension’ of Cortazar’s novels, which resist a single dogmatic interpretation, but Dr Boldy’s sympathetic analysis allows the reader to approach an understanding of the individual novels and the way these are linked by an underlying thematic pattern. Cortazar’s work is seen in the context of its European and Argentinian background: the cultural materials of surrealism, allusiveness and eclecticism that he absorbs and transforms. The approach to the four major novels is not limited to one particular aspect or theme, but the dualism inherent in the writing and its philosophical and formal implications provide the basic framework for study.