From the Observatory Paperback - 2011

Of course inevitable metaphor, eel or star, of course hooks for the image, of course fiction, therefore stillness in libraries and armchairs; as you like, there is no other way here to be a sultan of Jaipur, a shoal of eels, a man who turns his face up to the open in the redheaded night. Ah, but not to give in to the lure of that intelligence used to other offers: entering into words, out of a vomit of stars or eels; whatever’s said, the slow curve of the marble instruments or the boiling black nocturnal ribbon assaulting the estuaries, and not just for being said, this that flows or converges or seeks might be what it is and not what it is said to be: Aristotelian dog, let the duality that sharpens your fangs somehow know your superfluity when another sluice begins to open in marble and in fish, when Jai Singh with a crystal between his fingers is that fisherman extracting from his net, with a shudder of teeth and fury, an eel that is a star that is an eel that is a star that is an eel.

Pure Cortazar in all his masterful out-of-this-world imagery.  Illusory and poetic text accompanied by stunning photos make this book a perfect summer present for visitors or hosts as it is its own magical fairytale journey for adults. —Salonica

Cortazar seeks 'another possible profile of man.' From the outset, as rendered in Anne McLean's elegant translation, he embraces the slipperiness of knowledge and language itself. —Literaure and Arts of the Americas

Archipelago’s latest offering, From the Observatory, is a slender, gorgeous thing, a photo-essay-cum-prose-poem-manifest . . . joyously slippery. —The Nation

From the Observatory is a welcome addition to [Cortazar's] well-established English oeuvre. It exposes the intelligence and idiosyncratic connections that reflect a unique and creative mind. —The Quarterly Conversation

Vivid... Cortazar makes both science and language something utterly sensual... In a stunning translation by the talented Anne Mclean. —The National

The photographs beautifully evoke their subject and also give some key to the genesis of the work itself... They recall the cinematic values that inspired two of the finest films of the French New Wave, Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad and Hiroshima Mon Amour. —The Wall Street Journal

A glittering showcase for a daring talent...Julio Cortazar is a dazzler. —The San Francisco Chronicle

Julio Cortazar is a stunning writer. It is difficult to imagine how he could improve as a writer of short stories. —The Christian Science Monitor

A first-class literary imagination at work. —The New York Times

Julio Cortazar was born in Brussels in 1914 and grew up on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. His other works include Autonauts of the Cosmoroute, 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 Roero, Juan Gabirel Vazquez, Ignacio Martinez Pison, Carmen Martin Gaite, enrique Vila-Matas, and Hector Abad, as well as Autonauts of the Cosmoroute and From the Observatory by Julio Cortazar. She has twice won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.