Autonauts of the Cosmoroute Tapa blanda - 2007

And when the Great Khan had charged the two brothers and the baron of the embassy with the commission he was sending to the Pope, he caused to be given them a golden tablet, engraved with the royal seal and signed in the custom of his State, in virtue of which, instead of a passport, the three bearers were emissaries of the Great Khan, entitled to be everywhere con- veyed in safety through dangerous places, by the governors of provinces and cities, on pain of disgrace, throughout the whole empire, having their expenses everywhere defrayed, and should be furnished with whatever was needful for them and their attendants in all places, and for as long as they might have occasion to stay, just as if it were He himself who happened to pass that way.

Idols invite respect, admiration, affection, and, of course, great envy. Cortázar inspired all of these feelings as very few writers can, but he inspired, above all, an emotion much rarer: devotion. He was, perhaps without trying, the Argentine who made the whole world love him. —Gabriel García Márquez

Cortázar’s last book is unexpectedly his happiest and most playful, both linguistically and with the vicissitudes of life... Every page reveals that there is no end, because the end is to go farther, to cross all boundaries. Twenty years later Anne McLean restores the joy and liberty of the original to these autonauts. And it seems to me that Cortázar and Dunlop are still there, on their freeway, alive, happy forever inside a motionless time. —Tomás Eloy Martínez

Anyone who doesn’t read Cortázar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease, which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder . . . and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair. —Pablo Neruda

This is a special book, definitely worth reading, one that will alter your view of highways forever. —Chad W. Post

The journey undertaken by Cortázar and his wife and collaborator Carol Dunlop is quixotic in the largest sense. At one level, it is an adventure stood on its absurd head. At another, it is something graver—a mask of comedy concealing the enigma of an archaic smile. —Richard Eder, The Los Angeles Times Book Review

Julio Cortzar was born in Brussels in 1914 and grew up on the outskirts of Bueno Aires. His other works include Diary of Andrs 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 Vzquez, Ignacio Martnez de Pisn, Carmen Martn Gaite, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Hctor Abad, as well as Diary of Andrs Fava and From the Observatory by Julio Cortzar. She has twice won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.