It was Bioy Casares' breakthrough effort, for which he won the 1941 First Municipal Prize for Literature of the City of Buenos Aires.

She and another man, a bearded tennis player called Morel who visits her frequently, speak French among themselves.

He comes up with all sorts of theories about what is happening on the island, but finds out the truth when Morel tells the tourists he has been recording their actions of the past week with a machine of his invention, which is capable of reproducing reality.

He claims the recording will capture their souls, and through looping they will relive that week forever and he will spend eternity with the woman he loves.

The fugitive picks up Morel's cue cards and learns the machine keeps running because the wind and tide feed it with an endless supply of kinetic energy.

He learns how to operate the machine and inserts himself into the recording so it looks like he and Faustine are in love, even though she might have slept with Alec and Haynes.

On the diary's final entry the fugitive describes how he is waiting for his soul to pass onto the recording while dying.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote in the introduction: "To classify it [the novel's plot] as perfect is neither an imprecision nor a hyperbole."

Mexican Nobel Prize winner in Literature Octavio Paz echoed Borges when he said: "The Invention of Morel may be described, without exaggeration, as a perfect novel."

Other Latin American writers such as Julio Cortázar, Juan Carlos Onetti, Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel García Márquez[1] have also expressed their admiration for the novel.