SOURCE: Holmes, Amanda. “Residential Unhomes in Short Stories by Julio Cortázar and Ilse Aichinger.” Neophilologus 87, no. 2 (April 2003): 246-64.

In the following essay, Holmes compares the question of home in Cortázar's “Casa tomada” and Ilse Aichinger's “Wo ich wohne.”

In his short story “Casa tomada,” Julio Cortázar creates what Anthony Vidler calls an “unhomely house”—a house that prevents the dweller from experiencing the comfort and shelter that a home should otherwise offer. Characters feel ill-at-ease inside these houses, fleeing them to escape the disquieting inner environments as the once cosy spaces become unhomely. Cortázar's urban home loses all signs of safety as the siblings leave its confines to escape the invading Other. The dichotomy of heimlich and un-heimlich converges in this residence through the incursion of an exterior force onto the interior.

As the Other in “Casa tomada” enters the house, the brother and...