Invention of Morel

Adolfo Bioy Casares. The Invention of Morel. And Other Stories (from La Trama Celeste). Austin: University of Texas Press, [1964]. First U. S. edition. Octavo (9 x 5.875 inches; 228 x 150 mm.). [8], 237, [3, blank] pages. Full-page illustrations by Norah Borges de Torre throughout. Publisher's light whitish-brown cloth, spine lettered in black, spine and front board stamped in green; variant with top edge of the text block stained yellow, others trimmed; green endpapers; in the original dust jacket, priced $5.00. Spine just barely askew; front board with the slightest splay; board edges very faintly foxed or soiled. Top edge of the text block faintly foxed; previous ownership signature in pen on the front free endpaper. Dust jacket spine panel tanned just a shade, visible only in the text of the title and on the verso; edges with a touch of wear with a couple tiny nicks and a very soft marginal crease on the rear panel. Near fine. An exceptional copy. Prologue by Jorge-Luis Borges.

Direct source for the forgettable 1974 Emidio Greco film starring Anna Karina as Faustine but more famous for its relationship with the formalist masterpiece Last Year at Marienbad (1961), directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet, which was the subject of Thomas Beltzer's "Last Year at Marienbad: An Intertextual Meditation" (Senses of Cinema, November 2000). Though their plots, superficially, have little in common, The Invention of Morel is also cited as the film's source material in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. (#10050).