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The Invention of Morel (1940) - Adolfo Bioy Casares
The Invention of Morel (1940) - Adolfo Bioy Casares [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
The Invention of Morel (sometimes translated as Morel's Invention) is a 1940 novel by Argentine fiction writer Adolfo Bioy Casares. Arguably his most famous work, it's a classic example of Latin American Science Fiction. The 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad was inspired by this novel--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Morel [Aug 2006]
Book Description
The Island of Doctor Moreau inspired this 1940 novella. Set on a mysterious island, The Invention of Morel is a story of suspense and exploration as well as an unlikely romance, where every detail is both crystal clear and deeply mysterious. Susan Jill Levine's revision of Ruth Simm's translation offers a new experience of an uncanny work of genius. --from the publisher
Book Description
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. --from the publisher
On its surface this is a detective novel, that genre which Borges praised many times - including in the preface to Mr. Bioy Casares' 1940 collection of short stories, ''The Invention of Morel'' - as preferable to the ''plotless'' psychological novels of such writers as Balzac, Proust or the 19th-century Russian novelists. --Mary Morris, New York Times, 1988
See also: Last Year at Marienbad (1961) - magic realism - novel - South America - 1940