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Though born in Belgium and raised in Argentina, Julio Cortázar lived and wrote in Paris from 1951 till his death in 1984, thus making “Autonauts of the Cosmoroute,” though it was first published in Spanish, at least an honorary French book. As such, it begins in a refreshingly offbeat way: in 1982, Cortázar and wife, Carol Dunlop, took a car trip from Paris to Marseille. Normally, the drive would last around 10 hours, but Cortázar and Dunlop resolved never to leave the autoroute and to explore each of its 65 rest areas. Thus it took them 33 days to get from northern France to the Mediterranean, as they searched for the freeway’s hidden side and tried to push the travel narrative to some new extreme.

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