"In these days I will send the publishing house my latest novel, which will give them gray hair for its length and other reasons", Julio Cortázar wrote to a friend in what was, perhaps, the first warning that an extraordinary book was soon to come out. Rayuela, published in Buenos Aires in June 1963, was the most famous title of this author and a landmark in Spanish-speaking literature. Throughout these pages, Eduardo Romano proposes a thorough tour into the mental library of Cortázar writing that novel in Paris, brings back the cultural spirit of the time and looks at several iconic passages of the book.