SOURCE: A review of El lado de la sombra, in World Literature Today, Vol. 67, No. 1, Winter, 1993, pp. 154-55.

Below, Hernández offers a positive assessment of the stories collected in El lado de la sombra.

Originally published in 1962, El lado de la sombra heralded Adolfo Bioy Casares's partial return to fantastic fiction after Guirnalda con amores (1959). Of the ten stories in the collection, four deal with fantastic subjects; of these, "El lado de la sombra" is undoubtedly the best. In it a traveler to exotic lands encounters a former friend who has experienced a change in fortune. The story is told from the perspective of a first-person narrator—indeed, eight of the stories utilize first-person narration—whose descriptions of a Conrad-like Indonesian setting prepare the reader for the fateful encounter.

The story manifests some of Bioy's best traits. He elaborates a spellbinding plot, skillfully revealed in successive stages...