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Published in 1946 in the magazine “Anales de Buenos Aires”, the short story “House Taken Over” (“Casa Tomada” in spanish) by Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar, tells the story of two people, a nameless narrator and his sister Irene, living a quiet life inside their big family home. Gradually, strange noises and baffling specters invade parts of the house, forcing the siblings to give up little by little their space, retreating to the back of the house while their lives carry on.

About Julio Cortázar (1914-1984)

Argentine writer, one of the great masters of the fantastic short story, who has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges. Many of Cortázar's stories follow the logic of hallucinations and obsessions. Central themes in his work are the quest for identity, the hidden reality behind the everyday lives of common people, and the existential angst. The author's debt to the French Symbolism and Surrealists has been demonstrated in a number of studies. Unlike Borges, Cortázar became a political radical who was involved in anti-Peronist demonstrations and supported the Cuban revolution, Allende's Chile, and Sandinista Nicaragua.

"No one can retell the plot of a Cortázar story; each one consists of determined words in a determined order. If we try to summarize them, we realize that something precious has been lost." (Jorge Luis Borges)

Julio Cortázar was born in Brussels, Belgium, of Argentine parents abroad on business. When he was four years old, his family returned to Buenos Aires, where he grew up in a suburb. Cortázar attended the Escuela Normal de Profesores Mariano Acosta, a teachers training college. In 1935 he received a degree as a secondary-level teacher. He studied then two years at the University of Buenos Aires and taught in secondary schools in Bolívar, Chivilcoy, and Mendoza. In 1944-45 he was a professor of French literature at the University of Cuyo, Mendoza. He joined there a protest against Peron and was briefly imprisoned. After his release he left his post at the university. From 1946 to 1948 he was a director of a publishing company in Buenos Aires. He passed examinations in law and languages and worked then as a translator.

In 1951, in opposition to Peron's regime, Cortázar travelled to Paris, where he lived until his death. In 1953 he married Aurora Bernárdez. They separated and Cortázar lived with Carol Dunlop in later years. From 1952 he worked for UNESCO as a freelance translator. He translated among others Robinson Crusoe and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe into Spanish, Poe's influence is also seen in his work.

Los Reyes (1949) was Cortázar's earliest work of fantasy interest. The long narrative poem constituted a meditation on the role and fate of the Minotaur in his labyrinth. Cortázar's first collection of short stories, Bestiario, appeared in 1951. It included 'Casa tomada' (A House Taken Over), in which a middle-aged brother and sister find that their house is invaded by unidentified people.

As a novelist Cortázar gained first attention with Los premios (1960), which appeared when the author was 46. The story centered on a group of people brought together when they win a mystery cruise in a lottery. The ship-of-fools becomes a microcosmos of the world order. His masterpiece was Rayuela (1966, Hopscotch), an open-ended anti-novel, in which the reader is invited to rearrange the material. Rayuela was intended to be a revolutionary novel. It opened the door to linguistic innovation of Spanish language and influenced deeply Latin American writers.

Cortázar visited Cuba after the revolution, and in 1973 he travelled in Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, and Chile. Cortázar became in the 1970s a member of the Second Russell Tribunal for investigation of human rights abuses in Latin America. He also gave the Sandinistas the royalties of some of his last books and helped financially the families of political prisoners. When the seven-year ban on his entry
into Argentina was lifted he visited his home country and Nicaragua in 1983.

In 1975 Cortázar was a visiting lecturer at the University of Oklahoma, and in 1980 he was a lecturer at Barnard College in New York. In 1981 he acquired French citizenship. Cortázar received numerous awards, including Médicis Prize for Libro de Manuel in 1974 and Rubén Darío Order of Cultural Independence in 1983. He died of leukemia in Paris on February 12, 1984.

For the text of the story:

https://shortstoryproject.com/stories...