Axolotl, by Julio Cortázar

Today we open our space to a brilliant Franco- Argentinian writer: Julio Cortázar. We listen to one of his most celebrated stories, inspired by one of the most beautiful and enigmatic amphibians on Earth: the tiny Axolotl.

Axolotl is a meditation on that mortal danger that loneliness is for us human beings. We see a lonely man disintegrate; we are witnesses to the way loneliness, the lack of friends and relationships that keep us mentally sane, can precipitate us into a pit of alienation when we lose our sense of identity and only our ghosts and the voices in our mind seem real.