★ A four-hand collaboration between literary masters Borges and Casares. See how the two join forces to create a detective story.
★ First-ever Chinese translation
[About the Authors] Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) was an Argentine poet, novelist, critic, and translator, and a master of Spanish-language literature.
Born in Buenos Aires on August 24, 1899, he spent part of his youth traveling around Europe with his family. He published his first poetry collection, Fervor de Buenos Aires, in 1923, his first essay collection, Inquisiciones, in 1925, and his first short-story collection, A Universal History of Infamy, in 1935, gradually establishing his place in Argentina’s literary world. His best-known poetry collections include Notebook of San Martin and The Gold of the Tigers; his story collections include The Garden of Forking Paths and The Aleph; and his essay collections include A History of Eternity and Other Inquisitions. These works won him international acclaim. He also translated works by writers such as Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.
He served as director of the National Library of Argentina and as a professor of literature at the University of Buenos Aires. Among the many literary honors he received were the Argentine National Prize for Literature, the Formentor International Publisher’s Prize, the Jerusalem Prize, the Balzan Prize, the Cino Del Duca Prize, and the Cervantes Prize.
He died in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 14, 1986.
Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) was an Argentine journalist, novelist, and translator. His novel The Invention of Morel, published in 1940, won the first Buenos Aires Municipal Literature Prize. He later received the Cervantes Prize, the Argentine Writers’ Association Honorary Prize, the French Legion of Honor, and other distinctions. He met Jorge Luis Borges in 1932, and the two became close friends. They collaborated on numerous works, including a series of short stories, plays, and fantasy tales written under the pseudonyms Honorio Bustos Domecq and Benito Suarez Lynch.
[Synopsis]“Our second collaboration was another detective novel, A Model for Death. It was an unusual novel, full of jokes. But it had only one edition and was never distributed. We signed it B. Suarez Lynch. The B. stands for Bioy and Borges. Suarez was the name of another of my great-grandfathers, while Lynch was the name of another of Bioy’s.”
A Model for Death is a work coauthored by Borges and Casares, part of the Bustos Domecq series. This time, writing under the joint pseudonym Suarez Lynch, they created a detective story centered on a mysterious corpse. Characters from every level of society, including aristocrats, lawyers, and petty crooks, take turns appearing before the prisoner-detective Isidro Parodi in his cell to give their accounts. The novel’s distinctive style is full of playful humor.
The plot of this book is very interesting, each character has his own story, like a small social being. I particularly like the character of the detective prisoner, who can still think calmly in difficult situations. However, I kind of hate that self-righteous nobleman who is always domineering. The language in the book is also very distinctive, and the playful style makes it easy to read. Overall, this is an interesting detective novel worth reading.