The Invention of Morel
SynopsisPlot
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.
Story
About this book
A fugitive arrives on what appears to be a deserted island, then finds a group of well-dressed people who seem unaware of his presence. Watching from hiding, he becomes obsessed with a woman among them and slowly uncovers a strange invention built by a man named Morel. The story is told as a diary, mixing suspense with questions about perception and recorded experience.
Bioy Casares, an Argentine writer and longtime collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges, published the novella in 1940. Borges praised its plotting, comparing it to Henry James's The Turn of the Screw and Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Octavio Paz also admired it, and it became one of the works linked to the postwar boom in Latin American fiction.
Its influence reached cinema: Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet's 1961 film Last Year in Marienbad drew on its premise. Bioy Casares took inspiration from his fascination with the American silent-film actress Louise Brooks. The book is compact and precise, built around a single location, a small cast, and one device whose implications widen as the narrator watches.
