What is the name of the protagonist in Julio Cortázar's 'Hopscotch'?

The protagonist of Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch is Horacio Oliveira. He is an intellectually restless Argentine expatriate whose experiences in Paris and Buenos Aires form the novel’s central narrative. Oliveira spends time with a circle of artists and intellectuals called the Serpent Club, and his relationship with La Maga, whose real name is Lucía, drives much of the Paris section.

Hopscotch was published in Spanish as Rayuela in 1963 and is famous for its unconventional structure. Cortázar supplies a “Table of Instructions” that allows readers to follow the chapters in an alternative order, making the act of reading part of the novel’s design. Oliveira’s search for a unifying meaning or “center” mirrors the book’s larger interest in uncertainty, chance, and fragmented experience.

Morelli is an older writer whose ideas influence the Serpent Club, not the protagonist. Traveler is Oliveira’s childhood friend in Buenos Aires, and La Maga is his lover and intellectual opposite. Oliveira’s movement between Paris and Argentina, along with his increasingly unstable state of mind, gives the novel its distinctive maze-like shape.