[In the following excerpt, Stavans finds The Adventures of a Photographer in La Plata disappointing.]

The future will remember the Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares as the close friend and collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges. It will also acknowledge his novels The Dream of Heroes and the remarkable The Invention of Morel. Unfortunately, The Adventures of a Photographer in La Plata will probably not share this immortality. Published in Spanish in 1985, it describes the weeklong assignment of Nicolasito Almanza, a small-town photographer who is asked by a book publisher to travel to the big city to take pictures of the principal buildings and monuments. La Plata is known for its intricate passageways and sad landscape. In his labyrinthic experience, Almanza gets involved with, and is abused by, Don Juan Lombardo, an old man on the verge of a financial crisis who takes him for his lost son Ventura. Almanza frequents cafes in the company of political activists and a cop, has separate sexual encounters with Don Juan's two daughters and maintains a bizarre relationship with his hotelkeeper—all in an atmosphere tending toward the surreal. Compared with other works by Mr. Bioy Casares, this one is poor and unoriginal. The reader cannot but find echoes in it of Julio Cortázar's "Blow-Up," a masterful story in which not even the camera is a source of reliable truth. Here the plot is perceived through a kaleidoscope where intentions and feelings are never what they seem to be. Mirrors and a set of stained-glass windows are symbols in the hero's hallucinations. But the story is never fully developed, and the interrelating parts are brought together in a trivial manner.