Julio Cortázar
Julio Florencio Cortázar was born in 1914, in Brussels, the son of Julio Cortázar and Maria Herminia Descotte. The family lived in Switzerland during the Second World War, since Brussels was occupied by the Germans. After the end of the war, the family was able to return to Argentina, but his father abandoned them. He was brought up by his mother and grandmother. From 1946 to 1948 he was the director of a publishing company in Buenos Aires, and he also worked as a translator. In 1951, in protest against Peron’s regime, Cortázar travelled to Paris, where he lived until his death in 1984. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a freelance translator. In 1953, he married Aurora Bernárdez, a translator, and he was to have two further marriages. Although he is known as a novelist and a short story writer, he also was an acclaimed poet, translator and amateur jazz musician. Historios de cronopios y de famas was first published in Argentina in 1962.