The book is set on the eve of WWI, on the French penal colonies off Guyana, including the infamous Devil's Island. Nevers, a young naval lieutenant, is sent the islands for unspecified reasons by his family. On his arrival he becomes aware of erratic behaviour by Castel, the governor of the colony. Convinced that Castel is plotting a rebellion with the help of the prisoners, Nevers becomes unwillingly embroiled in an investigation, becoming both fascinated and repelled with the islands' nightmarish effect on the humanity they house.
This was another very good book. Bioy-Casares builds an ominous tension, aided by the heat and lethargy of his setting. The feel is almost apocalyptic, as what starts as idle curiosity for Nevers turns into a morbid obsession, that he realises will eventually threaten his own sanity, and perhaps even his life. Just enough plot is revealed at the right pace to maintain interest. It is difficult to say too much about the denouement without giving too much away, but suffice to say that, as befits a friend of Borges, the mystery resolves into a metaphysical puzzle. Definitions of freedom and captivity become bent out of recognisable shape, leading to an almost sci-fiesque feel to the book. Perhaps the ending felt a little frivolous in comparison to the dark intensity of the rest of the book, but it was still a very interesting read.

A Plan for Escape narrates the journey of lieutenant Henrique Navers, in exile from France for mysterious reasons, to an unnamed prison archipelago in the French Guiana, where he’ll take charge of the penitentiary. Before departing from the mainland he hears ominous concerns that the prison governor, Pedro Castel, may be a crazed anarchist preparing the inmates for a revolution. Navers isn’t very interested since he wants to leave as soon as possible and return to the woman he loves, and any investigation would only delay his departure; but as Navers arrives to the island, the atmosphere of mystery, madness and deceit starts taking a toll on his curiosity and he is irreversibly forced to find the truth. And so begins one of the most labyrinthine novels I’ve ever read.

Casares was a genre fiction lover: with his friend Jorge Luis Borges he wrote detective fiction and composed an anthology of fantastic creatures. On his own he wrote fantasy, surreal and science fiction. He edited crime novels. Like Borges, he found realism a farse, an illusion, a mistake in a 3000-year-old history that started with the tales of gods like Gilgamesh, and which would be rectified one day.

In Borges’ prologue for The Invention of Morel (by Casares too), he claimed that the 20th century was the century of narratives; that the previous centuries paled in comparison to the intricate plots a Kafka, a Chesterton or a Casares created. Nothing supports his contention better than this short novel: the atmosphere is sometimes unbearable, as if the reader were dreaming about drowning and couldn't wake up; the author conjures horrors with a minimum of words, sets up intense scenes and vivid characters with a few sentences. Like in the detective fiction he admired, the plot takes precedence.

This is not to say there isn’t a psychological component. Indeed the narration itself has the intricateness that I’ve come to expect from South American writers. A relative of Navers narrates the action, which he learned from the letters he received; sometimes he even mixes his words with quotes from the letters. But he’s not passive: sometimes he disagrees with what Navers says, sometimes he mocks him, sometimes he wonders if he isn’t insane. And through his words we see Navers being sucked to a horror he wants to reject but is compelled to pursue.

Anyone who loves mystery, oppressive settings, and madness; anyone who loves the nightmarish parables without end that Kafka created; or anyone who loves elegant, complex prose should love A Plan for Escape. ( )