CORTÁZAR, Julio. Hopscotch. Trans. from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. London: Collins and Harvill Press. 1967. 8vo. First British edition. Publisher’s green cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the wraparound dust jacket designed by Jack Larkin. A very good copy. The cloth clean and bright, very slightly bumped to extremities. The binding tight and square, the contents clean with some very mild toning throughout and a few light handling marks. An odd ink line to very top of half-title and title page, and non-library ink reference to rear endpaper corner. The dust jacket unclipped (35s net), slightly crimped and nicked around extremities, some browning here, but a sharp example.

The uncommon first British edition of Cortázar’s wonderful magnum opus whose fame rests—and justly so—on its formulation; it can be read in a normal fashion which ends with chapter 56, or else it can be read in an order given by the author which begins at chapter 73. This is by no means a gimmick, and adds to the novel’s stream-of-consciousness examination of indifference. A waymark of postmodernism and existentialism worldwide which transcends that frustratingly usual Latin American typecast.