ADOLFO BIOY CASARES (1914–99) was born into a wealthy family in Buenos Aires and wrote his first novella—for a cousin with whom he was in love—at the age of eleven. He published his first book, Prólogo (Prologue), just four years later. He met Jorge Luis Borges in 1932, beginning a lifelong friendship that produced many collaborations, including the invention of the mock detective Don Isidro Parodi. Also, through Borges’s friend Victoria Ocampo he met his future wife: her sister, Silvina, whom he married in 1940. Bioy’s most famous work is The Invention of Morel (1940), which inspired the film Last Year at Marienbad. He won many awards during his career, including the 1991 Cervantes Prize and the French Legion of Honor. He died in Buenos Aires in 1999.
SILVINA OCAMPO (1903–93) was born in Buenos Aires, the youngest of six siblings. As a young woman she traveled to Europe to pursue a career as a painter, studying under Giorgio de Chirico and Fernand Léger. She published her first work of fiction, the story collection Forgotten Journey, when she returned to Argentina in 1937. By this time she had begun a relationship with her future husband Adolfo Bioy Casares. She went on to publish several volumes of award-winning poetry, stories and children’s books, and was twice awarded the Argentine National Literature Prize. With Borges and Bioy Casares she edited the groundbreaking 1940 Anthology of Fantastic Literature. She died in Buenos Aires in 1993.
SUZANNE JILL LEVINE has translated the work of Manuel Puig, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Jorge Luis Borges. Among her books is The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction.
JESSICA ERNST POWELL won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for her translation of Antonio Benítez Rojo’s Woman in Battle Dress.