Morel’s Invention

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.