"Casa Tomada" (

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

: "House Taken Over") is a 1946

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar.The House Taken Over, Aix-en-Provence Festival – review
/ref> It was originally published in ''Los anales de Buenos Aires,'' a literary magazine edited by

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known b ...

, and later included in his volume of stories ''

Bestiario ''Bestiario'' is a book of eight short stories written by Julio Cortázar. All the stories (except "Cefalea" and "Circe") were translated to English by Paul Blackburn and included in the collection '' End of the Game and Other Stories'' (1967). ...

''. It tells the story of a brother and sister living together in their ancestral home which is being "taken over" by unknown entities. It starts in a realist manner and it slowly introduces a scene in which natural laws are distorted. The mystery that revolves around what those entities are is largely left up to interpretation, allowing the genre of the story to vary from

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...

psychological fiction In literature, psychological fiction (also psychological realism) is a narrative genre that emphasizes interior characterization and motivation to explore the spiritual, emotional, and mental lives of the characters. The mode of narration examin ...

to magic realism, among others. Among the resources that are frequent in Cortázar's story, graphic signs (such as parenthesis) are used to reflect censorship. The writer based the house on one located in the city of

Chivilcoy Chivilcoy is a city in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, the head town of the Chivilcoy Partido. It has 64,185 inhabitants according to the . Tourism February Carnivals In the month of February, a three-day carnival is held over an extended ...

in the

Province of Buenos Aires Buenos Aires (), officially the Buenos Aires Province (''Provincia de Buenos Aires'' ), is the largest and most populous Argentine province. It takes its name from the city of Buenos Aires, the capital of the country, which used to be part of th ...

, which can still be found in the streets Suipacha and Necochea.

Plot

A male narrator and his sister are introduced, both in their early-forties. Each has faced difficulties in their adult lives, the narrator having lost his fiancée long ago, and the sister (Irene) having denied two suitors who sought her hand in marriage. Inheriting their parent's house and wealth, they live a quiet, usually mundane, domestic existence. The narrator describes the estate and the siblings' routine in great detail, describing their chores and interests; Irene knits all day, unraveling her work the moment it does not please her, while the narrator collects French literature and buys Irene wool during his visits to the bookstores. Usually, their home is silent, but when one day the narrator suddenly hears something inside another part of the house, the siblings escape to a smaller section, locked behind a solid oak door. In the intervening days, they become frightened and solemn; on the one hand noting that there is less housecleaning, but regretting that the interlopers have prevented them from retrieving many of their personal belongings. All the while, they can occasionally hear noises from the other side. Eventually, the narrator hears "them" take over the section of the house he and Irene have been forced into. Hurriedly, the siblings escape the house and find themselves in the street, empty-handed. The narrator locks the front door and tosses the key into the sewer. The source of the noises is never revealed, leaving the reader to wonder who or what has taken over the house and forced the sister and brother out. The story has been viewed as an anti- Peronism work, since Julio Cortázar had been forced to resign his professorship the same year the story was written.

References

{{Julio Cortázar 1946 short stories Short stories by Julio Cortázar Works originally published in Argentine magazines Works originally published in literary magazines Argentine short stories