Cronopios and Famas

Cronopios and Famas is one of the best-loved books by Julio Cortázar, one of the greatest of Latin American novelists.

"The Instruction Manual," the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format. "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions and predilections of the narrator's family, including the lodging of a tiger-just one tiger- "for the sole purpose of seeing the mechanism at work in all its complexity." Finally...