Adolfo Bioy Casares was an Argentine writer, journalist, diarist, and translator. He was born on September 15, 1914, and died on March 8, 1999. He worked closely with Jorge Luis Borges, another Argentine writer. He wrote the fantasy novel The Invention of Morel.

Biography

Adolfo Bioy Casares was born on September 15, 1914, in Buenos Aires, the only child of Adolfo Bioy Domecq and Marta Ignacia Casares Lynch. He was born in Recoleta, a neighborhood in Buenos Aires where many wealthy families lived, and he spent most of his life there. Because his family was very wealthy, he was able to focus on writing and create work that was different from the usual books of his time. He wrote his first story, "Iris y Margarita," when he was 11 years old. He studied at the Instituto Libre de Segunda Enseñanza at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Later, he started but did not finish degrees in law, philosophy, and literature. He became unhappy with the university and moved to a family ranch, where he spent most of his time studying literature. By his late twenties, he was fluent in Spanish, English, French (which he learned at age 4), and German. Between 1929 and 1937, he published several books, including Prólogo, 17 disparos contra lo porvenir, Caos, La nueva tormenta, La estatua casera, and Luis Greve, muerto. He later disliked these works and stopped publishing them, calling all his writing before 1940 "horrible."

In 1932, he met Jorge Luis Borges at Villa Ocampo, a house in San Isidro owned by Victoria Ocampo. Victoria often hosted important people and organized cultural events, one of which brought Borges and Bioy Casares together. Bioy Casares remembered that the two writers stepped away from the group, and Victoria scolded them. This made them leave the event and return to the city together. Their journey led to a lifelong friendship and many important writing projects. Together, they used the names H. Bustos Domecq and Benito Suárez Lynch for their work, including short stories like Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi, Dos fantasías memorables, and Un modelo para la muerte, as well as screenplays like Los orilleros, El paraíso de los creyentes, and Invasión. They also wrote fantasy fiction, such as Antología de la literatura fantástica and Cuentos breves y extraordinarios. Between 1945 and 1955, they directed "El séptimo círculo," a collection of translations of English detective stories, a genre Borges admired. In 2006, a biography of over 1,600 pages based on Bioy Casares' journals was published. He had prepared and corrected the text earlier, but he never published it himself.

In 1940, he published the short novel The Invention of Morel, which marked the start of his mature writing career. Borges wrote the introduction to the book, noting that Bioy Casares was the first Spanish-language writer to create science fiction. The book was well received and won the First Municipal Prize of Literature in 1941. Around the same time, he collaborated with Borges and Silvina Ocampo, Victoria's sister, to publish two anthologies: Antología de la literatura fantástica (1940) and Antología poética argentina (1941). In 1940, he married Silvina Ocampo, who was also a painter and writer. Their relationship broke many social rules of their time, including the 11-year age difference, their eight years together before marriage, and Bioy Casares’ habit of having other relationships. In 1954, one of his mistresses had a daughter, Marta, in the United States. Marta was later adopted by Silvina. Marta died in a car accident three weeks after Silvina’s death, leaving Adolfo with two children. After Silvina and Adolfo’s deaths, a Buenos Aires court gave their estate to another of Adolfo’s children, Fabián Bioy. Fabián died at age 40 in Paris, France, on February 11, 2006.

Bioy Casares won many awards, including the Gran Premio de Honor of SADE (the Argentine Society of Writers, 1975), the French Legion of Honour (1981), the Diamond Konex Award of Literature (1994), the title of Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires (1986), and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (1991, awarded in Alcalá de Henares). Adolfo Bioy Casares is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

Themes and style

Bioy Casares is known for a classical writing style, initially influenced by Jorge Luis Borges. However, over time, he created unique elements that set his work apart. His early period (1929–1937) was later rejected by him and is described by critics as a development phase shaped by Symbolism and Surrealism. His work is typically divided into at least two main phases.

Common themes in Bioy’s writing include the idea of a Faustian bargain, the presence of female characters, time travel, and questions about how reality is perceived. Unlike the definitions of the fantastic by Roger Caillois and Tzvetan Todorov, which focus on unexplained events in a realistic setting, Bioy’s stories often involve characters entering a different or unfamiliar world that exists alongside the real world. These stories often involve journeys or attempts to escape, where characters travel to other places, experience key events, and then return or try to return to their normal lives. This structure is similar to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Bioy did not use elements from Gothic fiction. Like Borges, his stories often center on a single fantastic event that is later explained. His work has also been compared to that of Julio Cortázar in how everyday life and characters are portrayed.

Love is another common theme in his work, often shown through ideas linked to Romanticism or courtly love. Female characters are often shown as mysterious or unclear, while male characters are frequently depicted as strongly attached to things they cannot obtain. Critic José Miguel Oviedo described these male characters as “deliberately senseless and incompetent” and called Bioy Casares’s works “fantastic comedies.”

Works

The most famous novel by Bioy Casares is La invención de Morel (The Invention of Morel). It tells the story of a man who runs away from the law and hides on an island believed to be infected with a strange, deadly illness. As he tries to figure out why things seem to repeat, he discovers that the people he sees are not real but are instead recordings made by a special machine invented by Morel. This machine can capture three-dimensional images, voices, and even smells, making the recordings feel exactly like real life. The story combines elements of realism, fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Jorge Luis Borges wrote an introduction for the book, calling it a work of "reasoned imagination" and comparing it to the writings of H. G. Wells. Both Borges and Octavio Paz described the novel as "perfect." The story is believed to have inspired the film Last Year at Marienbad by Alan Resnais and influenced the TV series Lost.

Short story collections

Most of these Spanish-language collections have not been translated into English in a planned way. English-language collections include:

• Miscellanies (a mix of stories, poems, essays, reflections, and sayings)
• Dictionary of Argentinean slang
• Works written together with Jorge Luis Borges
• Dos fantasías memorables and Un modelo para la muerte, which were first printed in limited editions of 300 copies each. Their first widely sold editions were published in 1970.
• Works written together with Silvina Ocampo
• Works written together with Daniel Martino
• Screenplays written together with Jorge Luis Borges