Julio Cortazar – The Winners

A widely assorted group of people win as a lottery prize a cruise—destination unknown. Their journey reads like—and is—a superb story of suspense that ranges from the most unconventional of love affairs to the violent death of one of the passengers. Part of the suspense revolves around the fact that the passengers are forbidden to cross over to the ship’s stern, ostensibly because there is an epidemic among the mysterious crew. What is the danger, the plague? Does it really exist? Where are the consolations of authority to comfort them? If this is a pleasure cruise, why are they virtual prisoners? And the lines are drawn, the passengers divide into a “war” party and a “peace” party. But which one will insist upon breaking through the barriers and which one will bow to the ship’s law? The novel’s climax is their shocking confrontation with the question of who the winners really are, and what are their prizes. This book is the world in miniature, and some of contemporary fiction s most memorable characters inhabit- it: a young unmarried couple whose first lovemakings are anything but what they had expected; a sophisticated architect traveling with a beautiful redhead whom the other passengers assume to be his mistress; a delightfully pompous schoolteacher whose devotion to bureaucracy is complete. These and others are forced to a knowledge of themselves through Julio Cortazar’s profound skill in creating a novel that has many levels of meaning yet thoroughly entertains with the pleasure of its narrative alone.

Allison & Busby, 1986 Softcover edition. Light discoloration to edges of pages.