Adolfo Bioy Casares

A compendium of the final novels written by Bioy Casares: The Adventure of a Photographer in La Plata (1985), An Odd Champion (1993) and From One World to Another (1998).

As soon as he arrives in La Plata, sent there to take photos for a new collection of books about cities, Nicolás Almanza meets the Lombardos, a family who treats him with excessive trust, but that attracts him in a way that completely disarms him. The adventure of the photographer in La Plata (1985), draws on Bioy’s renowned narrative virtuosity, shot through with strong doses of humour and terror. In An Odd Champion (1993) taxi driver Luis Ángel Morales loses his renowned shyness thanks his intoxication with a set of easy-going passengers, and almost unawares his fighting skills, so well suited to his trade, begin to live up to the two names he bears in homage to Firpo, the mythical Bull of the Pampas.

Conversely, the interplanetary expedition that journalist Javier Almagro and his girlfriend Margarita embark on in From One World to The Other (1998) make Bioy’s last novel the most unpredictable, incredible and perhaps most César Airean work that occupies a privileged place on the grand stage of Argentinian literature.

To avoid leaving his astronaut girlfriend alone, Javier agrees to travel as a reporter on the first spaceship Argentina sends to space. But something goes wrong, and Margarita and Javier are ejected with parachutes. Upon landing, Javier thinks he is surrounded by a familiar landscape: "Am I in Palermo Woods?" he wonders. Stupefied, he discovers he has fallen on an unknown planet inhabited by strange birds with human-like behaviour. What was an adventurous romantic strategy transforms into an unusual situation with nightmarish overtones, making Javier a participant in intricate political conspiracies. To make matters worse, Margarita is nowhere to be found. Master of the fantasy genre, Adolfo Bioy Casares has written a dazzling short novel featuring some of his favourite themes: travel as a form of escape, the existence of parallel worlds, machines and inventions, man's powerlessness against fate, and the limits of love.

Written in collaboration with Silvina Ocampo

In seaside Bosque del Mar, Argentina, guests at the Hotel Central are struck by double misfortune—the mysterious death of one of their party, and an investigation headed by the physician, writer, and insufferable busybody, Dr. Humberto Huberman. When pretty young translator Mary is found dead on the first night of Huberman’s stay, he quickly appoints himself leader of an inquiry that will see blame apportioned in turn to each and every guest—including Mary’s own sister—escalating into a wild, wind-blown reconnaissance mission to the nearby shipwreck, the Joseph K.

Where There’s Love, There’s Hate is both a genuinely suspenseful mystery and an ingenious send-up of the genre—a novel that’s captivating, unashamedly erudite, and gloriously witty.

Luis Ángel Morales es taxista y también un buen hombre que se mete en muchos líos casi sin enterarse. No obstante, sus amigos ven en él la réplica del campeón de boxeo Luis Ángel Firpo, quien “sacó del ring a Dempsey”; por eso lleva su nombre. Pero Morales no es ningún héroe ni pretende serlo. Su único deseo es encontrar a Valentina, de quien conserva el hermoso recuerdo de un amor efímero. Lo obsesiona la creencia de que la perdió “por falta de fe en sí mismo”. añadir: Reencontramos aquí ese humor algo malévolo que surca casi toda la obra de Bioy y que induce a leerle con una sonrisa a veces incómoda, como desplazada, pero ineludible, casi obligada.

 La aventura de un fotógrafo en La Plata narra las peripecias de Nicolasito Almanza durante su estancia en La Plata ciudad a la que acude en el cumplimiento de su primer encargo como fotógrafo profesional y de sus azarosas relaciones con la familia Lombardo y los personajes que pueblan su mundo de huésped de pensión. Apariencia y realidad, sueño y vigilia, plena consciencia y alucinación, se funden sutilmente para subrayar la fundamental ambigüedad de este relato, que, si bien participa de los elementos de la novela de intriga y del relato fantástico, es, a la vez, una hermosa historia de amor.

Lucio, a normal man in a normal (nosy) city neighborhood with normal problems with his in-laws (ever-present) and job (he lost it) finds he has a new problem on his hands: his beloved wife, Diana. She’s been staying out till all hours of the night and grows more disagreeable by the day. Should Lucio have Diana committed to the Psychiatric Institute, as her friend the dog trainer suggests? Before Lucio can even make up his mind, Diana is carted away by the mysterious head of the institute. Never mind, Diana’s sister, who looks just like Diana—and yet is nothing like her—has moved in. And on the recommendation of the dog trainer, Lucio acquires an adoring German shepherd, also named Diana. Then one glorious day, Diana returns, affectionate and pleasant. She’s been cured!—but have the doctors at the institute gone too far?

Asleep in the Sun is the great work of the Argentine master Adolfo Bioy Casares’s later years. Like his legendary Invention of Morel, it is an intoxicating mixture of fantasy, sly humor, and menace. Whether read as a fable of modern politics, a meditation on the elusive parameters of the self, or a most unusual love story, Bioy’s book is an almost scarily perfect comic turn, as well as a pure delight.

“A sweet, increasingly surreal fable....The fantastic events seem less momentous than the almost saintly likeableness of Lucio, one of those people whom things happen to with a cockeyed vengeance. Levine’s slangy, salt-of-the-earth translation helps to make this shapely and appealing." Kirkus Reviews

"Its broader themes of compatibility and well-being, and man’s attachment to place and routine, connect it with such older twentieth-century masterworks as Mann’s The Magic Mountain." Choice

"A witty and ironic comment on our desires and the social structures we have created. This tale...weds laughter and terror in haunting fashion." Publishers Weekly

Written almost a decade before the death squads disrupted Argentina, it is the gripping first-person narrative of an old man caught in a wave of persecutions against all old people. Adolfo Bioy Casares relates the day-by-day life of Isidro Vidal, the "old boys" from the corner cafe, and the women, young and old, who offer temporary redemption from madness and mob terror.

At the end of carnival 1927, Emilio Gauna had an experience that he knew was the culmination of his life. The problem is that Gauna can only dimly remember what happened: he was out on the town with his raucous, reckless friends when a masked woman appeared. Several hours later, gasping and horrified, Gauna awoke at the edge of a lake. Three years later, he tries to solve the mystery the only way he knows: by re-creating the same situation and reliving it –despite the warnings of his secret protector, the Sorcerer.

In The Dreams of Heroes, Adolfo Bioy Casares assembles magicians, prophetic and brave women, shamefully self-conscious men and Buenos Aires under the rubric of a sinister and mocking fate, and thrusts them forward into the dizzying realm of memory, doom and cyclical time. Written in 1954 and never before published in America, The Dream of Heroes stands as a predecessor of and model for a whole school of European and American novels that followed but never quite matched it.

"... a poignant moral allegory about a sensitive boy doomed by machismo. Bioy Casares combines social and magical realism with an involuted structure that readers of Borges or of Garcia Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude will recognize." " Here, fate is character and culture; the novel successfully satirizes the dream of heroes as it wonderfully evokes the Buenos Aires of the 1920's." Kirkus Review

"In The Dream of Heroes, under the guise of an adventure-mystery novel - complete with Carnival, masked women, dark woods, inexplicable events and alcoholic stupors - Mr. Bioy Casares recounts a kind of metaphysical fairy tale in which the hero, caught between good and evil, enters upon a doomed search for self." Mary Morris, The New York Times

This is a story full of suspense that forms part of the same universe as Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi, although, humour plays a prevalent role, with really hilarious moments. This novel was written in collaboration with Jorge Luis Borges.

A Plan for Escape is an extraordinary fable about freedom and human happiness in times of oppression. In this novel, Adolfo Bioy Casares wonders whether a man locked in a cell can feel free and truly happy. The perverse idea that takes roots from the tortuous mind of the governor Castel – the absolute master of the islands of the convicted – is to modify parts of the brains of some of the prisoners in order to give them new sensory experiences. A Plan for Escape is a book full of symbols and ideas that unfold in an imaginative and riveting prose, by one of the great narrators of the 20^th century.

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. 

There have been numerous film and theatre adaptations of this work.

“A perfect novel.” Jorge Luis Borges

“After The Invention of Morel it's not possible to continue writing novels in the same way.” Roberto Bolaño

“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

 « Un des romans les plus inventifs de la littérature contemporaine. » J.-M. G. Le Clézio

For the first time, a single volume brings together all the work of the literary partnership formed by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares.

Apart from having gone down in history as two of the foremost figures of Argentine literature, Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares were close friends for fifty years. Among other interests they were united by their admiration for the detective stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe and G. K. Chesterton. 

They began working as a team by chance, when they were commissioned to write a promotional brochure for a yogurt that neither of them took very seriously. However, they discovered a new, different writer with a voice of his own, who emerged as if by magic from the union of their two talents. 

This is how the unforgettable Honorio Bustos Domecq and Benito Suárez Lynch were conceived, pseudonyms under which Borges and Bioy published a series of delightful detective stories over more than three decades, written in the best tradition of the classics but loaded with explosive satirical gunpowder.

A collection of the last three books of short stories by Adolfo Bioy Casares: Outrageous Tales (1986), A Russian Doll (1991) and Modest Magic (1997).

The idea of travel and displacement loom large in the various stories that comprise the three books of short stories by Bioy Casares, as well as a clear feeling of being alert, in a kind of countdown. This frontier that verges on disquiet is embodied by a persistent illness in the well-known ‘Venetian masks’, whilst in ‘Leaving’  urgency comes with the deadline to deliver a note regarding the disappearance of Correas; and in A Russian Doll, Pollo Maceira’s need to eke out his money until he finally marries Chantal, a millionairess who fell in love with him by chance, but never picks up the check.

That countdown is far from over when the waiting comes to an end. On the other hand, unexpected doors open the way to almost fantastical outcomes, that can summon fleeting apparitions that give new meanings to the whole plot, to underwater worlds, in some cases, humour, diplomatic conflicts, problems of gigantism and last but not the least something very similar to immortality.

The reader will have the chance to taste the quintessential capabilities of Bioy Casares, master of a prose that is able to, in its exquisite nakedness and ruthless irony, always leave a void of uneasiness in the reader. Therefore, for example, in Oblivion where a lover of the Latin poet’s life and work had to travel the far reaches of Europe to discover that uprooting is part of the human condition. In The Last Flat and A Tiger and its Master, the author unveils what’s behind the curtain that separates reality from dreams. Thus, story after story, he creates a subtle feeling of strangeness, through the thirty-nine tales which comprise A Modest Magic, whilst he weaves and unravels the destiny of banal existences at will, suddenly shaken by shadows, the absurd and a magic, that is in fact, not so modest.

A Russian Doll and Other Stories is the ninth collection of short fiction by Adolfo Bioy Casares.

Bioy Casares’s narratives are elegant and urbane, his style precise and streamlined, as he paces his characters through seriocomic traps of fate––ensnared by love, impelled by lust, ambition, or plain greed, even metamorphosed by pharmaceuticals. These are not stories in a psychological mode but like the image of the Russian doll of the title piece are carefully wrought congeries of intractable selves within selves.

This collection of stories echoes the permanent obsessions of Adolfo Bioy Casares: dreams, the existence of a doppelgänger, travel, the futility of love, the fight against ageing, immortality… Overall, there are ten Outrageous Tales that showcase the Argentinian writer’s astonishing capabilities of the to create fabulous worlds, constructed with humour and a dazzling literary art.

A work written in collaboration with Jorge Luis Borges. The fondness of both of these Argentine writers for the crime fiction genre is well known. No one better than them to choose the best crime fiction stories of all time. According to their avowal, ‘in order to choose the texts for this volume we have followed the only possible criteria: the pleasure principle.

A peaceful ambience, a couple of lovers and a threat which unexpectedly looms over them: just like a medieval magician, Adolfo Bioy Casares creates out of these elements a theatre of prodigies that keeps readers on the edge of their seats until the end of the show. His linguistic skills adjust the narrative tone to the changing characters in each story. In A door opens a doctor on the Avenida de Mayo offers his patients an infallible method to cure their amorous troubles, in Another Hope a town mayor negotiates the transformation of human suffering into electrical energy, in In the Shape of The World an inhabitant of El Tigre smuggles goods from an added dimension of outer space… The volume concludes with the story that gives it its title, a magical creole fantasy haunted by the terrible ghost of Facundo Quiroga. Inventiveness, adroit style, and humour, all of Bioy’s narrative qualities shine in The Women’s Hero. 

Contiene cuentos extraídos de Guirnalda con amores, El gran Serafín, El lado de la sombra y El héroe de las mujeres.

The main plot line deals with the end of the world. A group of people spend a few relaxing days in a spa on the Atlantic coast. The owner of the resort is a peculiar woman who lives with her pianist daughter, and an ingenuous waiter. Amongst the guests is a teacher in search for peace of mind or a carefree priest. Whilst they are there, they hear some terrible news: the world is ending. Faced with this monumental truth, none of them react, each individual focuses on their trivial concerns or jockeying for advantage.

In The Side of the Shadow, the author returns to past themes and opens up in his vein as a satirical writer. For example, in the stories The Side of the Shadow and “Longings”, the themes from Morel’s Invention are revisited from opposite perspectives. The first answers enigmatic questions such as: Is there one original person and then a succession of reiterations that get confused? Or: Can that one original person, once dead, reappear in a far corner of the world? In the second, the invention of Eladio Heller replaces the invention of Morel. It is no longer a replacement and perfect reiteration of the original, but a much more precarious eternity: a soul trapped in the wings of a theatre. The remaining stories, organised by the author between these two, also acquire a new resonance over time, like The Squid Opts for His Ink, a satire of village life and science fiction, or in Digging a Pit, a stark, realistic chronicle of a murder.  

Solitude, fear, desire, desperation before the unknown, extravagant love and love doomed to remain unfulfilled, all the old wounds of the human condition, are traced by Bioy Casares through stories, from aphorism and fable in a back-and-forth that is as entertaining as it is relentless.

This volume is a great example of Bioy Casares’ maturity as a story writer.  Previously marked by sharp contrasts and a degree of aloofness, the style becomes more low-key: artifice is less evident. Exotic scenarios give way to everyday areas of life where fantasy insinuates itself in a subtle, almost imperceptible way.

This compilation focuses on recurrent themes in Adolfo Bioy Casares’ literary output: parallel worlds, labyrinths or the power of mind over matter. Stories included: Paulina’s Memory; From Future Kings; The Idol; The Celestial Plot; The Other Labrinth; and The Perjury of Snow.

This volume includes two stories that are centred on visions. The first, The Witness is about a little girl who has a terrifying vision. The second, The Sign, describes a gastronome’s comforting vision. A work written in collaboration with Jorge Luis Borges.

The story which gives its name to the compilation deals with the murder of a young women from a well-to-do family in Patagonia. The author is inspired by a previous story by his friend Juan Luis Villafañe.

A work compiled in collaboration with Jorge Luis Borges. The fondness of both of these Argentine writers for the crime fiction genre is well known. No one better than them to select the best crime fiction stories of all time. According to their avowal, ‘in order to select the texts for this volume, we have followed the only possible criteria: the pleasure principle’.

Esta tragicomedia en un acto fue una tentativa bienhumorada en el género teatral, pero no tuvo continuidad.

In the first phase of their friendship, Borges assumed the role of a master, and Bioy, of a disciple. Their relationship, nevertheless, changed over time. Naturally, Bioy always saw Borges as a literary master, but their friendship soon transformed into one of equals. And in some respects, it was almost inverted.

In this work, the writer explains that his most distant memory of the words ‘pampa’ and ‘gaucho’ is linked with perplexities that come in the first phase of life, and that, for reasons we later forget, we never tell anyone, and thus they remain forever unclear. ‘At that time, I would’ve preferred the Republic to house, like India, jungles and tigers, but as long as we had pampa and gauchos, I wouldn’t deny them my patriotic reverence.’

Esta es una colección de prólogos y artículos muy útil para entender el pensamiento literario de Bioy Casares. El autor enumera algunas lecturas y traza magistrales retratos de escritores antiguos y modernos: el doctor Johnson, de quien sus contemporáneos decían: “No ha nacido el hombre que lo atemorice”; Thomas Macaulay, quien leía los infolios por las calles de Londres; la noche mágica en que el niño Robert Louis Stevenson ve, en un sueño, su mano que escribe la obra futura; Benjamin Constant y su aguda conciencia de la brevedad de la vida; y, claro, Jorge Luis Borges, el escritor, el amigo...

El libro se lee como una historia más de Bioy Casares, llena de episodios en los que aparecen, se cruzan, se enredan y a veces desaparecen toda suerte de personajes y lugares. De entrada, él mismo, niño, adolescente y adulto. También, Jorge Luis Borges, el amigo que para Bioy fue “la literatura viviente”; o Silvina Ocampo, con quien compartió su pasión por los libros; o el bulldog Firpo. Pero también familiares, estancieros, gentes del campo, habitantes de un Buenos Aires parisino y mundano, escritores vivos y muertos, conocidos y por conocer, libros, muchos libros, revistas literarias, transatlánticos, hoteles, editores, ciudades...

Tras unos meses agotadores en Buenos Aires y con la excusa de algunos compromisos con sus editores europeos, Adofo Bioy Casares emprendió un viaje en solitario por Europa en 1967. Al volante de un Peugeot alquilado, recorre Francia, Gran Bretaña, Suiza, Alemania, Austria, Italia y Andorra. El Bioy viajero recupera la salud y el ánimo, moviéndose al ritmo del deseo o del antojo, regodeándose en la lentitud y la sensualidad, degustando los menús de cada lugar, comentando películas, canciones, deteniéndose aquí y allá para leer, y para retratar ambientes y personajes. Sus crónicas sacan a la luz al magnífico narrador de anécdotas.

Recoge el diario de un viaje que Bioy Casares hizo en 1960, invitado al congreso del PEN Club en Brasil. Bioy estuvo en Río de Janeiro, São Paulo y en una aún incipiente Brasilia. El diario se completa con una serie de fotos inéditas de aquel periplo. 

Contiene cuentos extraídos de El gran Serafín, La trama celeste, El lado de la sombra e Historias desaforadas.

Contiene cuentos extraídos de La invención de Morel, El sueño de los héroes, Historia prodigiosa, El lado de la sombra, El gran Serafín, Guirnalda con amores, La otra aventura, Historias desafordas, El héroe de las mujeres y Las vísperas de Fausto.

Obra escrita en colaboración con Jorge Luis Borges, ambos compilan “textos de diversas naciones y de diversas épocas, sin omitir antiguas y generosas fuentes orientales”. Según los dos sabios, “lo esencial de lo narrativo está, nos atrevemos a pensar, en estas piezas; lo demás es episodio ilustrativo, análisis psicológico, feliz o inoportuno adorno verbal”. 

Artículos.

Los lectores son invitados a estar con Bioy, como si entraran en la intimidad de su sala de estar, y Bioy confesara cuáles son los seres, los libros o los instantes que más lo han conmovido. En esta charla plácida, inteligente y, por momentos, serenamente triste, se disfrutan anécdotas e ironías, se pasea por el encanto de la literatura italiana de la mano de Moravia o Calvino, se desvelan los secretos del genero epistolar, se imagina el amor como una variante de la locura, y se comprende que parte del encanto mágico de nuestras experiencias se basa en su fugacidad.

A lo largo de su muy dilatada y viajera vida, Adolfo Bioy Casares recogió en cuadernos o lo que tuviera a mano versos breves y fragmentos en prosa, frases leídas u oídas que, por una razón u otra, lo impresionaron, hicieron reflexionar, inspiraron o, simplemente, le hicieron reír. Hay notas muy breves y otras más largas, aunque todas van entremezcladas: las de autores célebres y las de genios anónimos; las de personajes famosos y las de ilustres desconocidos... Este libro las presenta a sus lectores como una caja de resonancia donde todas las voces se funden en una: la del propio Bioy.

Este volumen recoge una sugestiva selección de textos esotéricos, místicos y fantásticos sobre el tema del Más Allá. Obra escrita en colaboración con Jorge Luis Borges.

Adolfo Bioy Casares satiriza el uso de un lenguaje deliberadamente complejo por parte de cierto arquetipo local de “políticos y gobernantes, en un acto premeditado, a manera de baratijas para someter a los indios, porque el embaucador desprecia al embaucado”. Aunque sin pretensiones literarias, bien se podría considerar el diccionario económico del argentino contemporáneo.