This man, who cannot, could not, did not, does not and will not exist, wrote four (five) books between the years of 1942 and 1977. He was a pseudonym of Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares; he originally appeared as Francisco Bustos, which is what Borges signed his first story, Man on Pink Corner, later incorporated into A Universal History of Infamy, as the eighth part. The surname Borges had taken from one of his great-grandfathers; later, when Bioy joined him to write detective stories, he added a suitable great-grandfather of his own, thus Domecq. At the same time, his first name was changed to the prouder, if stiffer, Honorio.
Strangely, this false man began at once to live a life of his own; the imperfect, halting life certainly of the man who is not real, but a life nonetheless, because when Borges and Bioy worked together they did not simply produce the tally of Borges and Bioy; rather, a new person emerged, someone who was not a mere fusion of his components, but a coherent person who survived time, who managed in fact to remain suspended, whole, in the years between his productive periods. This was observed in his own staggered lifetime; it elicited some comment in Argentine literary circles, though they died out quickly; it is hardly remarkable that no-one would know quite what to make of the prodigy.
That prodigy in the middle of his life managed one more startling contrivance: he wrote a book under a pseudonym. This book is unquestionably in his hand; it uses his characters, the characters of his previous stories, but it is signed Benito Suárez Lynch. It is clear that these men are one and the same, for he, too, draws his name from the ancestors of his two component parts.
The last two books of H. Bustos Domecq are ascribed to him by their titles; although Borges and Bioy Casares are credited as the nominal authors, the work is unquestionably his own.
His thin if remarkable oeuvres complétes are, with translated titles:
Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi, 1942, a series of short, comical detective stories;
Two Noteworthy Fantasies, 1946, a further two, longer Parodi stories;
A Model for Death (as Benito Suárez Lynch), 1946, another comical mystery using the Parodi characters;
Chronicles of Bustos Domecq, 1967;
New Tales of Bustos Domecq, 1977