Horacio Oliveira is an Argentinian writer who lives in Paris with his mistress, La Maga, surrounded by a loose-knit circle of Bohemian friends who call themselves "the Club." A child's death and La Maga's disappearance put an end to his life of empty pleasures and intellectual acrobatics, and prompt Oliveira to return to Buenos Aires, where he works by turns as a salesman, a kepper of a circus cat who can truly count, and an attendant in an insane asylum. "Hopscotch" is the dazzling, free-wheeling account of Oliveira's astonishing adventures.