Jorge Luis Borges declared "The Invention of Morel" a masterpiece of plotting, c
omparable to "The Turn of the Screw" and "Journey to the Center of the Earth." S
et 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 cr
ystal 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 sec
ret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction's now fam
ous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet's Last
Year in Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.
