Buenos Aires (Argentina), 1914 – 1999

By Flávio Aguiar

Author of novels, short stories, and screenplays, he was the writer who had the closest relationship with Jorge Luis Borges, with whom he co-authored several volumes of detective stories featuring the character Isidro Parodi, published under the pseudonyms H. Bustos Domecq and B. Suárez Lynch. In his fictional work, fantasy and reality harmoniously overlap. In the series of novels that began with La invención de Morel (1940), he combined elements of classical myths, the fantastic, paranormal phenomena, and psychology, which led Borges to consider him “one of the greatest Argentine fiction writers.”

He married Silvina Ocampo, a prominent figure of the Generation of ’40, who co-founded the magazine Sur with her sister Victoria Ocampo. Among Casares’s short story collections is Una muñeca rusa (1991). For cinema, he collaborated with Borges on Los orilleros and El paraíso de los creyentes, both in 1955. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1980. He also published literary criticism and essays. Other works include El sueño de los héroes (1954) and Dormir al sol (1973).