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Final Exam
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Final Exam
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
This novel will engage readers interested in avant-garde literature, Latin American culture, and those who appreciate intricate narrative forms and existential themes.
One of Julio Cortazar's great early novels. "Anyone who doesn't read Cortazar is doomed."-Pablo Neruda
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Description
In its characters, themes, and preoccupations, Final Exam prefigures Cortázar's later fictions, including Blow-Up and his masterpiece, Hopscotch. Written in 1950 (just before the fall of Perón's government), it is Cortázar's allegorical, bitter, and melancholy farewell to an Argentina from which he was about to be permanently self-exiled. (Cortázar moved to Paris the following year.)
The setting of Final Exam is a surreal Buenos Aires, dark and eerie, where a strange fog has enveloped the city to everyone's bewilderment. Juan and Clara, two students, meet up with their friends Andrés and Stella, as well as a journalist friend they call "the chronicler." Juan and Clara are getting ready to take their final exams, but instead of preparing, they wander the city with their friends, encounter strange happenings in the squares, and ponder life in cafés. All the while, they are trailed by the mysterious Abel.
With its daring typography, its shifts in rhythm, as well as in the wildly veering directions of its characters' thoughts and speech, Final Exam breaks new ground in the territory of stream-of-consciousness narrative techniques. It is considered one of Cortázar's best works.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Final Exam is celebrated for its innovative stream-of-consciousness style, marking it as a key work in Cortázar's oeuvre. Critics have praised its Kafkaesque atmosphere and profound exploration of memory, imagination, and the human experience, highlighting its daring narrative technique and joyful depiction of life's fleeting moments.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780811217521
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 17 July 2008
Country: United States
Imprint: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Contributors:
- Translated by Alfred MacAdam
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 20.0mm
Width: 124.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 214g
Pages: 256
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About the Author
Julio Cortazar (1914-1984), Argentine novelist, poet, essayist, and short-story writer, was born in Brussels, and moved permanently to France in 1951. Cortazar is now recognized as one of the century's major experimental writers, reflecting the influence of French surrealism, psychoanalysis, and his love of both photography and jazz, along with his strong commitment to revolutionary Latin American politics. Professor MacAdam's area of specialization is twentieth-century Latin-American narrative, a subject on which he has published three books and numerous articles. He is also a translator of Latin-American fiction and has translated novels by Julio Cortazar, Reinaldo Arenas, Alejo Carpentier, Jose Donoso, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Osvaldo Soriano. From 1984 to 2004, MacAdam was the editor of Review: Latin American Literature and Arts, a publication of the Americas Society. This biannual magazine presents work by Latin-American writers not yet known to English-speaking audiences as well as unknown texts by already established writers.
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