The Russian Doll and Other Stories

A Russian Doll and Other Stories, published in Spanish in 1991 as Una muneca rusa, is the ninth collection of short fiction by one of this century's premier Argentinian writers who, with his fellow countrymen Julio Cortazar and Jorge Luis Borges, helped change the world's perception of Latin American literature. Bioy Casares' narratives are elegant and urbane, his style precise and streamlined, as he paces his characters through seriocomic traps of fate - ensnared by love, impelled by lust, ambition, or plain greed, even metamorphosed by pharmaceuticals. These are not stories in a psychological mode but like the image of the Russian doll of the title piece are carefully wrought congeries of intractable selves within selves.