Cortazar's 1963 novel can be read in two ways: straight through, or by following a different chapter sequence using the author's instructions. Its Paris-to-Buenos Aires dislocation, jazz-inflected prose, and intellectual playfulness made it the literary touchstone of 1960s Latin America. The novel that taught a continent's literature to be formally experimental.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.