Cortázar's most famous novel, Hopscotch (1963), is the story of an Argentine intellectual caught between the worlds of Buenos Aires and Paris. It is famous for its revolutionary narrative organization, which requires the reader to jump around the chapters, out of order, in order to read the novel. There are at least two sequences in which one can read the story, and this structure challenges linear notions of time and space.

Bird Lives!: The High Life and Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker (1996), by Ross Russell, is a compelling biography of Parker that explores his music without passing over his destructive and infamous personal life.

Jorge Luis Borges, who was a major influence over Cortázar and probably the most influential Argentinian author of the twentieth century, published the short story "The Garden of Forking Paths" in 1941. Now...