Fictions – Borges Jorge Luis (2011)

This English-language collection of Jorge Luis Borges’s short stories, translated from Spanish with an afterword by Andrew Hurley, presents the fantastic tales that introduced an entirely new voice into world literature. It includes the astonishing account of Funes the Memorious, who can forget nothing; Pierre Menard’s word-for-word recreation of Don Quixote; a society governed by an all-encompassing game of chance in The Lottery in Babylon; the mysterious world of Tloen, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, which seems to replace our own; and the Library of Babel, containing every possible book in the universe. The collection also features philosophical detective stories, haunting tales of Irish revolutionaries, gaucho knife fights and dreams within dreams. These stories brought Borges international fame and remain endlessly intriguing. Born in Buenos Aires in 1899, Borges was a poet, critic and short-story writer whose work received numerous awards, including the 1961 International Publisher’s Prize, shared with Samuel Beckett. Along with Kafka and Joyce, he is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.