A new translation of Adolfo Bioy Casares’s masterpiece, by prize-winning translator Margaret Jull Costa and now titled Morel’s Invention, will be published by NYRB Classics on October 13, 2026. Morel’s Invention may be found on the forthcoming page of the website.
The current edition, titled The Invention of Morel, is no longer available.
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 at Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.
