The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Published 1940 · 65,175 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Science Fiction, Literary Fiction
How hard is The Invention of Morel to read?
The Invention of Morel scores 67 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 58 out of 100
- Formal Spanish, precisely translated.
- Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
- Controlled, clear sentences.
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- A concrete island concealing a metaphysical puzzle.
- Information density: 62 out of 100
- Compressed; the whole machine is explained late and quickly.
- Narrative indirection: 72 out of 100
- A fugitive's diary, annotated by an editor, neither of them reliable.
- Symbolic density: 68 out of 100
- The machine and the island are the argument.
- Ironic distance: 58 out of 100
- The narrator's romantic reading of events is steadily undercut.
- Resolution withholding: 72 out of 100
- The final pages open a question rather than close one.
- Structural complexity: 78 out of 100
- A diary with editorial footnotes contradicting it.
How The Invention of Morel is regarded
The Invention of Morel holds a literary regard score of 72 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.