The Invention of Morel

Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) was born in Buenos Aires, the child of wealthy parents. He began to write in the early Thirties, and his stories appeared in the influential magazine Sur, through which he met his wife, the painter and writer Silvina Ocampo, as well Jorge Luis Borges, who was to become his mentor, friend, and collaborator. In 1940, after writing several novice works, Bioy published the novella The Invention of Morel, the first of his books to satisfy him, and the first in which he hit his characteristic note of uncanny and unexpectedly harrowing humor. Later publications include stories and novels, among them A Plan for Escape, A Dream of Heroes, and Asleep in the Sun. Bioy also collaborated with Borges on an Anthology of Fantastic Literature and a series of satirical sketches written under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq. »

Suzanne Jill Levine is the author of numerous studies in Latin American literature and the translator of works by Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Manuel Puig, among other distinguished writers. Levine's most recent book is Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fictions. She is a professor in the Spanish Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. »

By Adolfo Bioy Casares
Translated from the Spanish by Ruth L.C. Simms
Introduction by Suzanne Jill Levine
Prologue by Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of The Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy's novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.

Inspired by Bioy Casares's fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction's now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet's Last Year in Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.

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Reviews

A masterfully paced and intellectually daring plot. Like the best science fiction, of which this is an exemplar, Bioy's themes have become ever more relevant to a society beholden to image. It is this keenness of thought and expression that buttresses Borges's claim of the novella's perfection.
— The Times

The Argentine Adolfo Bioy Casares is an urban comedian, a parodist who turns fantasy and science fiction inside out to expose the banality of our scientific, intellectual, and especially erotic pretensions. Bioy makes us laugh at our foibles with an affectionate yet elegant touch.... Behind his post-Kafka, pre-Woody Allen sense of nonsense is a metaphysical vision, particularly of life's brevity and the slippery terrain of love.
— Suzanne Jill Levine

The Invention of Morel may be described, without exaggeration, as a perfect novel.... Bioy Casares's theme is not cosmic, but metaphysical: the body is imaginary, and we bow to the tyranny of a phantom. Love is a privileged perception, the most complete and total perception not only of the unreality of the world but of our own unreality: not only do we traverse a realm of shadows, we ourselves are shadows.
— Octavio Paz

To classify it as perfect is neither an imprecision nor a hyperbole.
— Jorge Luis Borges

Also see:

The Winners
By Julio Cortazar
Translated from the Spanish by Elaine Kerrigan
Introduction by Alastair Reid

[Cortázar] creates a language and a rhythm and sensuality as mysterious and terrible as Melville's but all in his own voice.... The Winners is a novel of ideas that challenges and disturbs the reader and enlarges one's sense of the intricate single human being. —William Goyen

The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
By Alvaro Mutis
Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman
Introduction by Francisco Goldman

Maqroll the Gaviero (the Lookout) is one of the most alluring and memorable characters in the fiction of the last twenty-five years.

Asleep in the Sun
By Adolfo Bioy Casares
Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine
Introduction by James Sallis

Bioy Casares's strange, sly novel may be read as a fable of modern politics or as a meditation on the elusive parameters of the self. Above all, it is an almost scarily perfect comic turn, as well as a pure delight.

Format: Paperback
Retail Price: $12.95
Price: $9.71 (25% off)

Aug 31, 2003
120 pages
ISBN: 1590170571
9781590170571
All Literature in Translation
NYRB Classics
Literature in Spanish

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