Julio Cortázar was born in Brussels in 1914 and grew up on the outskirts of Bueno Aires. His other works include Diary of Andrés Fava, Hopscotch, Blow-Up and Other Stories, All Fires the Fire, We Love Glenda So Much, A Certain Lucas, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds and Cronopios and Famas. He died in Paris in 1984.

Anne McLean has translated works by Javier Cercas, Evelio Rosero, Juan Gabriel Vázquez, Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Carmen Martín Gaite, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Héctor Abad, as well as Diary of Andrés Fava and From the Observatory by Julio Cortázar. She has twice won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.