Plan de evasión / A Plan for Escape

El teniente Nevers viaja a una isla de la Guyana Francesa para cumplir unos meses de trabajo en un complejo carcelario y se transforma en testigo de hechos asombrosos e inesperados.

Enviado a trabajar en un complejo carcelario de máxima seguridad en unas islas de la Guayana Francesa, el teniente Enrique Nevers se convierte en testigo del comportamiento inusual de los presos en sus celdas abiertas y llenas de espejos, el aire siempre ausente del gobernador Castel y la extraña sensación de que en esas islas caben tantos mundos como personas.

Con una ductilidad de géneros asombrosa que oscila entre la ciencia ficción, la novela de suspenso y el policial, Adolfo Bioy Casares resuelve los diversos enigmas de esta obra recién en las últimas líneas. Si La invención de Morel es, probablemente, la ficción contemporánea más elogiada por Jorge Luis Borges, Plan de evasión es, tal vez, lo más parecido que existe a la novela que este nunca escribió.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

A Plan for Escape is a weird, engrossing novel, bound to captivate—if not totally satisfy—most readers. The story revolves around Henri Nevers, a Frenchman sent by his father to a post at a penal colony in French Guiana. Arriving at Cayenne, the seat of government, Nevers learns that the governor, Castel, has deserted Cayerme to “be alone with the prisoners” on the islands.
 
When Nevers ferries to the islands, Castel meets him with delight as “an educated collaborator.” Nevers intuits that “Castel’s interest in social and prison matters is strictly sadistic,” and he tries to remain uninvolved. Confronted by inmates’ allusive remarks and his own observations, however, he is compelled to follow the clues that lead him to unearth the horrible results of Castel’s reign. Despite the novel’s horrors, its tone is eerily distanced by its point of view: The tale is narrated by Nevers’ uncle who has pieced it together from his nephew’s letters. This perspective allows for holes in the story which readers who demand closure may not want to accept.
 
“This short novel, firmly rooted in the Borges tradition, reminiscent of H.G. Wells, and thoroughly weird by conventional standards, is an exceptionally ambitious, intellectual mystery woven with horror and science fiction.” —Village Voice