Julio Cortázar was an Argentine novelist, short story writer, and essayist, who was one of the founders of the Latin American Boom and influenced an entire generation of Spanish-speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.
Background
Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and María Herminia Descotte, moved from Argentina in 1913 to Brussels, Belgium, where Cortázar was born on August 26, 1914. At the time of his birth Belgium was occupied by the German troops of Kaiser Wilhelm II.The Cortázars settled in Buenos Aires by the end of 1919.Once in Argentina, his parents divorced a few years later. Cortázar spent most of his childhood in Banfield, a suburb south of Buenos Aires, with his mother and younger sister. The home in Banfield, with its back yard, was a source of inspiration for some of his stories.Cortázar died in in Paris in 1984 , the cause of his death was reported to be leukemia.
Education
Cortázar obtained a degree as an elementary school teacher at the age of 18. He would later pursue higher education in philosophy and languages, although he never graduated from University of Buenos Aires.
Career
Cortázar taught in at least two high schools in Buenos Aires Province, one in the city of Chivilcoy, the other in Bolivar. In 1938 he self-published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis. He later repudiated this volume.In 1951, Cortázar, who was opposed to the government of Juan Domingo Perón, emigrated to France, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. From 1952 onwards, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. The projects he worked on included Spanish renderings of Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's novel Mémoires d'Hadrien, and stories by Edgar Allan Poe. He also came under the influence of the works of Alfred Jarry and the Comte de Lautréamont, and wrote most of his major works in Paris. In later years he became actively engaged in opposing abuses of human rights in Latin America, and was a supporter of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.