Morel’s Invention
Jorge Luis Borges author Adolfo Bioy Casares author Margaret Jull Costa translator Tom McCarthy editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Fitzcarraldo Editions
Publishing:25th Feb '27
£12.99
This title is due to be published on 25th February, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A political fugitive flees to an island he believes deserted, the epicentre of a strange disease where only an abandoned museum shows signs of former life. But soon his existence is disrupted by the arrival of a group of tourists, seemingly friends.
From a distance he observes their conversations and dinners, falling in love with the enigmatic Faustine as she watches the sunset each night and, confoundingly, ignores his attempts to speak to her. In fact, no one on the island notices his presence at all. The mysteries pile up: why do the tourists repeat the same conversations, play the same songs on loop? And why have two suns and two moons appeared in the sky?
A cult novel that helped to usher in Latin American fiction’s postwar boom after its publication in 1940, Morel’s Invention is an unforgettable work: a metaphysical enigma, sci-fi romance and existential adventure about obsession, illusion, consciousness and time, published here in a brilliant new translation by Margaret Jull Costa.
‘I believe it would be neither inaccurate nor hyperbolic to describe [Morel’s Invention] as perfect.’
— Jorge Luis Borges
‘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
‘After Morel’s Invention it's not possible to continue writing novels in the same way.’
— Roberto Bolaño
‘Adolfo Bioy Casares was a writer unlike any other, a sui generis talent.’
— Carlos Fuentes
‘Morel’s Invention 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
ISBN: 9781804273104
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
132 pages