Early on in Adolfo Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel, the unnamed narrator, unprompted and with little relevance to the surrounding narration, provides his thoughts on death: “I believe we lose immortality because we have not conquered our opposition to death; we keep insisting on the primary, rudimentary idea: that the whole body should be kept alive. We should seek to preserve only the part that has to do with consciousness.”