Octaedro / Octahedron
Short stories and novellas , 1974
Alfaguara
Pages: 128
Eight subtly interconnected stories that confirm Julio Cortázar as one of the greatest Argentine short story writers.
Just when Cortázar seemed to have reached perfection in the short story genre, Octaedro (1974) brought fresh proof of his unparalleled mastery. The eight stories that make up Octaedro—a shape as geometric as it is mysterious, as perfect as it is elusive—interweave the social and political themes Cortázar had explored in Libro de Manuel (1973) with his most recurring motifs: love, dreams, illness, death, and the threshold between the everyday and the fantastic.
Moreover, these stories work as facets that, taken together, complete the meaning of the whole figure: thus, the narrator of his own death in “Liliana Crying” finds a counterpart in “The Phases of Severo.” Each plot throughout the book echoes and extends into strange, alternate continuations.
Compact and, at the same time, limitless; precise and also unpredictable—if any short story collection can be called a hidden novel, Octaedro is undoubtedly it.