A Certain Lucas

17 October 2025

Territory Rights — Worldwide including Canada, but excluding the British Commonwealth.

Julio Cortázar (Author), Gregory Rabassa (Translator)

Description

A classic Julio Cortázar novel, long out of print in a new edition, this is an amazing rediscovery: “Short takes of whimsy and surrealism, the tidbits here are like diamond chips” (Kirkus Reviews)

A kaleidoscopic novel by Julio Cortázar, A Certain Lucas contains a series of brilliant, eccentrically interlocking pieces, by turns comic, philosophical, allusive, and always a pleasure to read. In short takes, we are plunged directly into the life of Lucas, learning about his patriotism, his friends (“a list of cronies large and varied”), his shopping routines (always in his pajamas), his favorite pianists, his battles with the Hydra (“now that he’s growing old he realizes it’s not easy to kill it”) . . . his world is described in multiple quick parodies, with hilarious evocations of the latest trends: physical fitness, semiotics, cool pornography, and animal ESP. We are given glimpses and ultimately offered a strange, yet rounded portrait of a complete man, but not just any man. . . . This is a certain Lucas.

Reviews

"I’m permanently indebted to the work of Cortázar." — Roberto Bolaño

"Anyone who doesn’t read Cortázar is doomed." — Pablo Neruda

"He was, perhaps without trying, the Argentine who made the whole world love him." — Gabriel Gárcia Marquez

"Readers will find in this book Cortázar in all his splendor: absurdity, magical realism, playfulness, an eccentric character, and mazes that turn you around and surprise even the most attentive of readers." — Miranda Mazariegos, Americas Quarterly

"Cortazar was devoted to flattening the high and low within his stories and cresting the truly fantastic: a classless world in which all suffer equally." — Sasha Frere-Jones, 4Columns

"A Certain Lucas is the book that best exemplifies the spirit of freedom and play that is Cortázar's greatest contribution to world literature." — Martin Riker, The New York Times

Paperback

9780811239370

130 x 203 mm • 144 pages

£11.99

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Standalone Ebook

9780811239387

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