Collected Fictions
For the first time in English, all the fiction by the writer who has been called “the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century” collected in a single volume
“An event, and cause for celebration.”—The New York Times
A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with flaps and deckle-edged paper
For some fifty years, in intriguing and ingenious fictions that reimagined the very form of the short story—from his 1935 debut with A Universal History of Iniquity through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, the enigmatic prose poems of The Maker, up to his final work in the 1980s, Shakespeare’s Memory—Jorge Luis Borges returned again and again to his celebrated themes: dreams, duels, labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, the manipulations of chance, gauchos, knife fighters, tigers, and the elusive nature of identity itself. Playfully experimenting with ostensibly subliterary genres, he took the detective story and turned it into metaphysics; he took fantasy writing and made it, with its questioning and reinventing of everyday reality, central to the craft of fiction; he took the literary essay and put it to use reviewing wholly imaginary books.
Bringing together for the first time in English all of Borges’s magical stories, and all of them newly rendered into English in brilliant translations by Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions is the perfect one-volume compendium for all who have long loved Borges, and a superb introduction to the master’s work for all who have yet to discover this singular genius.
For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
“An event, and cause for celebration.”—The New York Times
A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with flaps and deckle-edged paper
For some fifty years, in intriguing and ingenious fictions that reimagined the very form of the short story—from his 1935 debut with A Universal History of Iniquity through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, the enigmatic prose poems of The Maker, up to his final work in the 1980s, Shakespeare’s Memory—Jorge Luis Borges returned again and again to his celebrated themes: dreams, duels, labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, the manipulations of chance, gauchos, knife fighters, tigers, and the elusive nature of identity itself. Playfully experimenting with ostensibly subliterary genres, he took the detective story and turned it into metaphysics; he took fantasy writing and made it, with its questioning and reinventing of everyday reality, central to the craft of fiction; he took the literary essay and put it to use reviewing wholly imaginary books.
Bringing together for the first time in English all of Borges’s magical stories, and all of them newly rendered into English in brilliant translations by Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions is the perfect one-volume compendium for all who have long loved Borges, and a superb introduction to the master’s work for all who have yet to discover this singular genius.
For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Community Reviews
The next time I am going to read Ficciones I am sure my rating of the book is going towards a considerable increase if, at all, there is scope for it actually in my wonderment of an author who I believe writes with words which I felt were more like ebullient grains of sand. These stories are like essential morsels in the world of literature which, on discovery, leave you speechless and jubilant at the same time. Crisp sandy granules perfecly symmetrical and assymetrical alike is what I fill my palms with once I'm in the middle of a nameless tale... only to end up with empty clean hands once agian at the end of it. Only this time, I look at my own hands and they feel strangely transformed for they touched something entirely new.
Writing is an art. And the structural mazes conceived by the words of Borges makes you believe so. I loved the experience of reading each story in its own way... There are some I could get more deeply into than others but maybe with Borges it's not the story that you read but perhaps it is that each (Borgesian) story leads to stories... to those uninhabited steps which somebody did tread and... there you are... all of a sudden... a witness to the tracks.
More than anything, I believe, Borges checks the reader, tests and contradicts him/her with another possibility of another perception which you thought has not been and would not be perceived. What we think is there surely, he has the power to render fictive... and vice versa.
INTRIGUING. SPECULATIVE. PERCEPTIVE. PROFOUND.
In particular, I enjoyed 'Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote', 'An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain', 'The Library of Babel', 'Funes', 'Theme of the Traitor and Hero'. I took time to finish this anthology... I relished each moment... I visited a literary space rife with palpable words of imagination... I read and breathed beautiful forms of literary fiction.
Writing is an art. And the structural mazes conceived by the words of Borges makes you believe so. I loved the experience of reading each story in its own way... There are some I could get more deeply into than others but maybe with Borges it's not the story that you read but perhaps it is that each (Borgesian) story leads to stories... to those uninhabited steps which somebody did tread and... there you are... all of a sudden... a witness to the tracks.
More than anything, I believe, Borges checks the reader, tests and contradicts him/her with another possibility of another perception which you thought has not been and would not be perceived. What we think is there surely, he has the power to render fictive... and vice versa.
INTRIGUING. SPECULATIVE. PERCEPTIVE. PROFOUND.
In particular, I enjoyed 'Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote', 'An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain', 'The Library of Babel', 'Funes', 'Theme of the Traitor and Hero'. I took time to finish this anthology... I relished each moment... I visited a literary space rife with palpable words of imagination... I read and breathed beautiful forms of literary fiction.
Borges writes philosophical fantasy and sometimes mystery stories.
1. Borges and Me/ Borges y Yo (4 stars)- I've read this one in both Spanish and English. I don't prefer a version. It's a simple short story about Borges's identity as a person versus as a writer that I enjoyed.
2. The Garden of Forking Paths (4 stars)- One of the things that is particularly interesting to me about this story is that its concept of time has been hypothesized by the multiverse theory of physics. The first person to propose information that would later lead to the multiverse theory was Erwin Schrödinger, in 1952, some years after Borges wrote this story.
3. Man On Pink Corner (5 stars)- Rosendo Juarez, men and dogs respected him. A fun little murder mystery. Pay close attention!
4. The Library of Babel- (5 stars) Amazing thought experiment/ work of philosophy. (Note: The library in [b:The Magicians|6101718|The Magicians (The Magicians #1)|Lev Grossman|https:images.gr-assets.com/books/1313772941s/6101718.jpg|6278977] anyone?)
5. Death and a Compass/La Muerte y La Brujula (3 stars)- Read in Spanish and in English. Erik Lönnrot tries to solve murders which seem to follow a kabbalistic pattern. This one appears to be a favorite as it appears in all three of my Borges anthologies, but it's not one of my favorites. It's tricky and clever but I don't get much more from it.
"... la realidad no tiene la menor obligacion de ser interesante."
"... reality does not have the slightest obligation to be interesting."
6. The Lottery in Babylon/ The Babylon Lottery (3 stars)- More of the ideas of infinite choices and possibilities expressed in The Garden of Forking Paths and The Library of Babel. This is not my favorite execution of Borges's ideas about possible futures and philosophy.
7. The Maker (3 stars)- Very short, and I didn't get much from it.
8. The Zahir (3 stars)- Whatever this metaphor is I missed it.
9. The Encounter (3 stars)-Knife-control? Didn't love this story either.
10. The Circular Ruins (3.5 stars)- This is a very "La Vida es Sueno" type story. It's lovely though not earth-shattering.
11. Shakespeare's Memory (5 stars)- I love a lot about this story. I love Borges's conception of personhood. I love Shakespeare. I love the way Borges blatantly shows off his literary chops. Like many of his other great stories, you start to inhabit the story as if you are dreaming it and you lose sight of the real world around you.
12. August 25, 1983 (4 stars)- Hello me, it's future you. Don't you have anything useful to tell me? Nope.
13. The Immortal (5 stars)- As above, I am lost in the dream.
14. Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote (3.5 stars)- A bit of a spin on Borges y Yo basically.
15. The Story from Rosendo Juarez (3.5 stars)- Sequel to a Man on a Pink Corner!
16. The Aleph (5 stars)- What a super amazing story of romance. It is an insane work of fantasy. It's an interesting work of spirituality and philosophy. I love the ending. My heart might explode.
17. Dreamtigers (2 stars?)- He really was obsessed with tigers though. It's in almost all the stories.
1. Borges and Me/ Borges y Yo (4 stars)- I've read this one in both Spanish and English. I don't prefer a version. It's a simple short story about Borges's identity as a person versus as a writer that I enjoyed.
2. The Garden of Forking Paths (4 stars)- One of the things that is particularly interesting to me about this story is that its concept of time has been hypothesized by the multiverse theory of physics. The first person to propose information that would later lead to the multiverse theory was Erwin Schrödinger, in 1952, some years after Borges wrote this story.
3. Man On Pink Corner (5 stars)- Rosendo Juarez, men and dogs respected him. A fun little murder mystery. Pay close attention!
4. The Library of Babel- (5 stars) Amazing thought experiment/ work of philosophy. (Note: The library in [b:The Magicians|6101718|The Magicians (The Magicians #1)|Lev Grossman|https:images.gr-assets.com/books/1313772941s/6101718.jpg|6278977] anyone?)
5. Death and a Compass/La Muerte y La Brujula (3 stars)- Read in Spanish and in English. Erik Lönnrot tries to solve murders which seem to follow a kabbalistic pattern. This one appears to be a favorite as it appears in all three of my Borges anthologies, but it's not one of my favorites. It's tricky and clever but I don't get much more from it.
"... la realidad no tiene la menor obligacion de ser interesante."
"... reality does not have the slightest obligation to be interesting."
6. The Lottery in Babylon/ The Babylon Lottery (3 stars)- More of the ideas of infinite choices and possibilities expressed in The Garden of Forking Paths and The Library of Babel. This is not my favorite execution of Borges's ideas about possible futures and philosophy.
7. The Maker (3 stars)- Very short, and I didn't get much from it.
8. The Zahir (3 stars)- Whatever this metaphor is I missed it.
9. The Encounter (3 stars)-Knife-control? Didn't love this story either.
10. The Circular Ruins (3.5 stars)- This is a very "La Vida es Sueno" type story. It's lovely though not earth-shattering.
11. Shakespeare's Memory (5 stars)- I love a lot about this story. I love Borges's conception of personhood. I love Shakespeare. I love the way Borges blatantly shows off his literary chops. Like many of his other great stories, you start to inhabit the story as if you are dreaming it and you lose sight of the real world around you.
12. August 25, 1983 (4 stars)- Hello me, it's future you. Don't you have anything useful to tell me? Nope.
13. The Immortal (5 stars)- As above, I am lost in the dream.
14. Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote (3.5 stars)- A bit of a spin on Borges y Yo basically.
15. The Story from Rosendo Juarez (3.5 stars)- Sequel to a Man on a Pink Corner!
16. The Aleph (5 stars)- What a super amazing story of romance. It is an insane work of fantasy. It's an interesting work of spirituality and philosophy. I love the ending. My heart might explode.
17. Dreamtigers (2 stars?)- He really was obsessed with tigers though. It's in almost all the stories.
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