Borges Fiction

A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.
—Borges Luis Borges, A Note on (toward) Bernard Shaw

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Borges Works: Fictions & Artifices

The works featured on this page are:

Collected Fictions
Historia universal de la infamia / A Universal History of Infamy
El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan
Ficciones
El Aleph / The Aleph and Other Stories
El hacedor / Dreamtigers
Antología Personal / Personal Anthology
Labyrinths
El informe de Brodie / Doctor Brodie’s Report
El libro de arena / The Book of Sand
The Library of Babel (Illustrated)
Everything and Nothing

The books are presented in chronological order; with the exception of Collected Fictions, which takes pride of place at the beginning. Clicking the image of a book takes you directly to Amazon.com, unless it’s the original first edition, which just enlarges the image. If you have the resources to purchase one of these first editions, I’m sure you don’t need this site to get you there!

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Collected Fictions

Collected Fictions
Translation by Andrew Hurley.
Viking, 1998.

In 1999 the literary world celebrated the one-hundredth anniversary of Borges’ birth. This “Borges Centennial” was marked by numerous lectures, conferences, and artistic projects, from concerts of Borges-themed tango to exhibitions of rare, original manuscripts. One of the most anticipated events was Penguin-Viking’s publication of three massive volumes of Borges’ work, each dedicated to a different genre: his short stories, his non-fiction, and his poetry. It was the first time a single publisher had attempted to collect, curate, and translate the bulk of Borges’ impressive oeuvre, and it was justly celebrated as a watershed of Borges translation. The first of these volumes was Collected Fictions, released in 1998. Not only could a reader finally hold Borges’ collected fiction in a single volume, many of the stories had been long out of print, or available only in the original Spanish. As such, Collected Fictions is a treasure trove of Borges rarities, from the “universal iniquities” of his youth to his final story, “Shakespeare’s Memory.”

Collected Fictions represents the heroic efforts of a single translator, Andrew Hurley, who brings a marvelous consistency to a diverse body of work spanning half a century. Hurley taps into Borges’ crisp yet sonorous Spanish, giving the stories a natural rhythm and fluidity, and every detail is rendered with a lucid transparency. One senses a kind of rightness, or accuracy, in both word choices and popular idiom. Additionally, Hurley recognizes the wonderful humor in Borges, and many of these stories contain a welcome twinkle of irony. This being said, there are occasions where one misses the poetic liberties taken by earlier translators. For instance, “Funes the Memorious” is now drably rendered “Funes, His Memory,” and A Universal History of Infamy has been changed to the less stirring and more fussy A Universal History of Iniquity. While some of these older translations may be less true to Borges’ original Spanish, their absence brings to mind Borges’ comment, “The original is not faithful to the translation.” (Hurley has recently written an essay on his challenges translating these works, available at Inverse Journal.)

Collected Fictions gathers the stories from the following previous collections: A Universal History of Infamy (1935), Ficciones (1944), The Aleph (1949), Doctor Brodie’s Report (1970), and The Book of Sand (1975). It also extracts the prose works from El hacedor (1960) and In Praise of Darkness (1969), although it naturally leaves the poetry in these collections for Selected Poems. Unfortunately, Collected Fictions does not contain the stories Borges co-wrote with Adolfo Bioy-Casares under the joint pseudonym “Bustos Domecq”; nor does it contain The Book of Imaginary Beings. But importantly, it includes the four previously untranslated stories from the “Shakespeare’s Memory” section of Obras Completas 1975-1985. The book closes with an appendix of useful notes, annotating some of the more exotic personalities and locations featured in the stories, and pointing out nuances that might be missed by a reader unfamiliar with Spanish or its Argentine dialects.

While older Borges readers may miss the familiar translations of Anthony Kerrigan, Anthony Alastair Reid, and Norman Thomas di Giovanni; and the lack of the “Bustos Domecq” stories seems like a missed opportunity, these criticisms should not detract from praising this extraordinary and significant work. If you plan on owning a single volume of Borges’ stories, Collected Fictions is an excellent choice.

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Historia universal de la infamia
A Universal History of Infamy

Historia universal de la infamia
Buenos Aires: Editorial Tor, 1935.

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A Universal History of Infamy
Translation by Norman Thomas di Giovanni.
New York: E.P. Dutton, 1972.

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A Universal History of Iniquity (Included in Collected Fictions) 
Translation by Andrew Hurley.
Viking, 1998.

A Universal History of Iniquity
Translation by Andrew Hurley.
Penguin Classics, 2004.

Historia universal de la infamia is a collection of sketches that first appeared in the Buenos Aires newspaper Crítica from August 1933 to January 1934, along with the additional story “The Disinterested Killer Bill Harrigan,” penned specifically for the 1935 collection. Consisting of “falsifications and distortions” of stories Borges read elsewhere, Borges used these sources to inspire his first forays into literary invention, each sketch outlining the career of a legendary scoundrel. Influenced by his reading of Robert Louis Stevenson and G.K. Chesterton as well as the gangster films of Josef von Sternberg, the tales are lurid and cheerfully ironic, filled with sudden violence, witty paradox, and the occasional delightful twist. The seven “histories” were followed by five short parodies collected under the heading of “Etcetera” – fragments of original writing that Borges brazenly attributed to authors such as Burton and Swedenborg. While not considered part of the “mature” Borges canon, Historia clearly display the elements of the “Borgesian” style that would come to fruition the following decade—each sketch is imbued with a surreal sense of authenticity, a fusion of fact and fiction reported with deadpan objectivity. Indeed, several Latin America writers have cited Historia universal de la infamia as a personal inspiration, and it’s widely seen as a precursor to so-called “magical realism.”

Borges revised Historia universal de la infamia in 1954, at which time he added three additional pieces to the “Etcetera” section: “Mahomed’s Double,” “The Generous Enemy,” and “On Exactitude in Science.” This revision included a second preface, which begins: “I should define as baroque that style which deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) all its possibilities and which borders on its own parody.” In an attempt to place distance between himself and his infamous sketches, he dismissed them as the “irresponsible games” of a “shy young man.”

Like many of Borges’ remarks about his own writing, this genial self-effacement misdirects a reader from what is, in truth, an acute self-awareness of his development as an artist. In the twenty years between editions, Borges had published two masterpieces, Ficciones and El Aleph, and French translations of his work were establishing his reputation in Europe. In a very real way, when he returned to Historia, Borges closed the arc of a turning circle—after the 1950s, he would shift his creative focus from fiction to poetry, the literary passion that animated his youth. Although a few prose works in El Hacedor (1960) and The Book of Sand (1970) bear typical “Borgesian” trademarks, he would never completely return to the format and style of Ficciones. In fact, with the help of collaborator Adolfo Bioy Casares, Borges went on to whimsically parody his own work—the pieces found in The Chronicles of Bustos Domecq (1969) are the true “deliberate exhaustions,” deconstructing the Borgesian style by carrying its aesthetic conceits into the realm of absurdity.

Far from overworked self-parodies, the sketches in Historia are filled with audacity and youthful invention: shimmering with creative possibility, Historia reveals the seeds from which Ficciones’ garden of forking paths would flower. Despite the modesty of his second preface, Borges surely realized this—after all, in declining to revise the pieces, he archly invoked none other than the Apostle John: “What I have written I have written.” It is not too difficult to detect a flash of pride behind his ironic bombast.

Norman Thomas di Giovanni Translation
The first English version of Historia universal de la infamia was published by E. P. Dutton of New York, who commissioned Norman Thomas di Giovanni to work closely with Borges to ensure faithful renditions. (Details of this project may be found below, under The Aleph and Other Stories, the first such volume released by Dutton.) The 1972 edition gives the following contents, identical to the 1954 Spanish revision:

• The Dread Redeemer Lazarus Morell
• Tom Castro, the Implausible Imposter
• The Widow Ching, Lady Pirate
• Monk Eastman, Purveyor of Iniquities
• The Disinterested Killer Bill Harrigan
• The Insulting Master of Etiquette Kôtsuké no Suké
• The Masked Dyer, Hakim of Merv
• Streetcorner Man
• Et cetera, including: “A Theologian in Death,” “The Chamber of Statues,” “Tale of the Two Dreamers,” “The Wizard Postponed,” “The Mirror of Ink,” “A Double for Mohammed,” “The Generous Enemy,” and “On Exactitude in Science.”
• Index of Sources

This Dutton translation was acquired in the UK by Allen Lane/Penguin, and an Allen Lane UK version came out in 1973. In 1975 it was copyrighted by Penguin, which kept the British book in circulation long after the American original slipped out of print. The English translation is also notable for its inclusion of “Hombre de la esquina rosada,” an entirely original story about a knife-wielding compadrito that predates the Historias. Translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni as “Streetcorner Man,” this violent tale earned Borges some notoriety, though it was originally written under the cautious pseudonym of “Francisco Bustos.” Although Borges would later disparage the story as a “laboured composition,” it marks his first attempt at original fiction, and has been much anthologized over the years.

Andrew Hurley Translation
Andrew Hurley produced a new translation for Viking’s Collected Fictions in 1998. Restoring Borges’ pink corner back to “Hombre de la esquina rosada,” Hurley retitled the collection A Universal History of Iniquity. In 2004, Penguin published it as a separate book with the following contents:

• The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell
• The Improbable Imposter Tom Castro
• The Widow Ching – Pirate
• Monk Eastman, Purveyor of Iniquities
• The Disinterested Killer Bill Harrigan
• The Uncivil Teacher of Court Etiquette Kôtsuké no Suké
• Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv
• Man on Pink Corner
• Et cetera, including: “A Theologian in Death,” “The Chamber of Statues,” “The Story of the Two Dreamers,” “The Wizard that Was Made to Wait,” “The Mirror of Ink,” “Mahomed’s Double,” “The Generous Enemy,” and “On Exactitude in Science.”
• Index of Sources

As a final note, I should mention a curious reversal that would have made Borges smile in amusement. In a case of student surpassing the teacher, Thunder’s Mouth Press uses an excerpt from “Monk Eastman, Purveyor of Iniquities” as the foreword for their edition of Herbert Asbury’s Gangs of New York, the very book that inspired Borges’ Eastman sketch in the first place!

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El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan

El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan
Buenos Aires: Sur, 1941.

Translated as “The Garden of Forking Paths,” this collection of stories represents Borges’ attempt to re-establish himself as a writer after a near-fatal illness. Because the collection forms part of the better-known Ficciones, it is described in detail below.

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Ficciones

Ficciones
Buenos Aires: Sur, 1944.

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Ficciones
Translations by Anthony Kerrigan, Anthony Bonner, Alastair Reid, Helen Temple, and Ruthven Todd.
New York: Grove Press, 1962

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Ficciones
Translations by Anthony Kerrigan, Anthony Bonner, Alastair Reid, Helen Temple, and Ruthven Todd.
Alfred A. Knopf, 1993

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Ficciones (Included in Collected Fictions)
Translation by Andrew Hurley.
Viking, 1998.

In 1941, Borges published El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, or “The Garden of Forking Paths,” a collection of seven new stories plus an earlier story called “The Approach to al-Mu’tasim.” This was followed by nine additional stories under the title Artifices. In 1944, El jardín and Artifices were bundled together and published as Ficciones. (Although the title means “Fictions,” the original Spanish title is usually retained for English translations.) A cornerstone of postmodern literature, Ficciones is Borges’ most enduring and influential work.

Ficciones is divided into two sections: “The Garden of Forking Paths,” which contains the contents of the original El jardín collection, and the later “Artifices.” Although the stories of the “Garden” section are generally longer and somewhat more fantastical than those in “Artifices,” all the stories in Ficciones explore the labyrinthine nature of reality and the impact of language on literature, philosophy, metaphysics, and theology. Many stories describe or even review imaginary books penned by fictional authors, and more than a few engage in flights of meta-reality where reality and fiction are seamlessly intertwined.

The contents are given below, presented with the original Grove Press titles:

The Garden of Forking Paths

• “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.” A reference to an imaginary country leads the author deeper into a different linguistic and metaphysical reality.
• “The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim.” A review of a mystery novel concerned with the quest for an unreal person.
• “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” Borges explains why Menard’s twentieth century version of Don Quixoteis superior to that of Cervantes, despite being identical.
• “The Circular Ruins.” A mystic visionary attempts to dream a human into being.
• “The Babylon Lottery.” The Kafkaesque history of a society ruled by the random, invisible, and godlike Company.
• “An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain.” Reviews of three strange pieces of fiction by a very unusual author.
• “The Library of Babel.” The tale of a man, perhaps Borges himself, a caretaker in an infinite library.
• “The Garden of Forking Paths.” A mystery about an impossible book and a mythical labyrinth.

Artifices

• “Funes, the Memorius.” A nineteen year old invalid reveals that language is an inadequate tool for those who can forget nothing.
• “The Form of the Sword.” The tale of an Irish expatriate and the scar on his face.
• “Theme of the Traitor and Hero.” When history repeats literature, looking deeper reveals the hand of hidden forces.
• “Death and the Compass.” A detective story in which the ineffable name of God is the principal clue.
• “The Secret Miracle.” A writer’s final days under a Nazi death sentence.
• “Three Versions of Judas.” A review of the work of Nils Runeberg, a modern heresiarch, and his views on the nature of Judas Iscariot.
• “The End.” A completion of José Hernández’ great folk poem about Martín Fierro.
• “The Sect of the Phoenix.” The sectarians are a cult that have survived the ages, judiciously keeping the secret which unites them.
• “The South.” In this semi-autobiographical tale, a copy of the Thousand and One Nights precipitates the strange sickness of an Argentine nationalist.

While Ficciones brought Borges some recognition in the Spanish-speaking world, it wasn’t until the collection was translated into French in 1951 that his name traveled deeper into Europe. In 1961 Borges won the first-ever Formentor Prix International, a new award dedicated to honoring those authors whose work will “have a lasting influence on the development of modern literature.” Conceived and awarded by a panel of five international publishers—including New York’s Grove Press—the first prize of $10,000 was divided between Borges and the Irish expatriate Samuel Beckett. Although neither Borges nor the Prix Formentor were well known to the world at large, one of the benefits of the award was the translation and publication of the recipient’s work in each country represented by the panel: Spain, Italy, England, the United States, and Germany. Grove Press published an English translation of Ficciones in 1962, and Borges was soon catapulted into the international spotlight.

Note on Ficciones
A masterpiece of modern literature, I recommend Ficciones to anyone and everyone. I believe these stories comprise some of the most powerful thoughts about reality put to paper under the guise of fiction. While it would be both inaccurate and an exaggeration to suggest that Borges “invented” postmodernism with these works, their impact upon modern literature is incalculable. European OuLiPo, American postmodernism, the Latin American “Boom,” avant-garde science fiction, literary fantasy, modern weird fiction, literary and cultural criticism, even comic books—an exhaustive catalog of writing influenced by Borges would not only fill this site, it would overflow into countless other anthologies, magazines, and libraries.

So which version of Ficciones should you purchase? Because Viking’s Collected Fictions contains Ficciones and much more, it seems like an obvious choice. However, as much as I respect Andrew Hurley’s translations, the original team assembled by Grove Press produced the “classic” edition of Ficciones—a more poetic King James version compared to a more accurate New Revised Standard, if you will! Therefore I recommend purchasing Ficciones separately, preferably in addition to Collection Fictions. Although the Grove Press paperback is less expensive, the hardcover edition from Knopf’s “Everyman’s Library” series deserves special note, and its introduction, short biography, and chronology are worth the extra price.

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El Aleph
The Aleph and Other Stories

El Aleph
Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada S.A., 1949.

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The Aleph and Other Stories, 1933-1969
Translation by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with the author.
New York: E. P. Dutton, 1970.

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The Aleph (Included in Collected Fictions)
Translation by Andrew Hurley.
Viking, 1998.

The Aleph and Other Stories
Translation by Andrew Hurley.
Penguin Classics, 2004.

Originally published in 1949, El Aleph was the second major collection of Borges’ short stories, many of which had appeared in various Argentine literary magazines. In many ways a sequel to Ficciones, the stories of El Aleph find Borges obsessed with the same philosophical themes: the relationship between consciousness and reality, the mystical significance of language and symbols, the mysteries of time and eternity, and the limits of obsession itself. Other familiar elements include copious labyrinths, reviews of fictional books, a casual mixing of reality and invention, and a return to Argentine’s colorful history of gauchos. While the stories are still remarkable, El Aleph lacks the urgency and striking originality of Ficciones—with the notable exceptions of “The Immortal,” “The Zahir,” and “The Aleph,” one of Borges’ most famous creations. Still, it remains an essential and important collection.

Although it took a few editions to stabilize, the seventeen stories in the “final” 1952 edition of El Aleph are below, presented with di Giovanni’s titles:

• “The Immortal.” A man’s quest for the City of the Immortals brings him face to face with the Absolute.
• “The Dead Man.” A story of revenge and betrayal among knife-wielding gauchos.
• “The Theologians.” An exploration of the line between heresy and orthodoxy.
• “Story of the Warrior and the Captive.” A barbarian who becomes enlightened and a civilized woman who prefers the savage are found to be more similar than not.
• “A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874).” A gloss on the gauchesco poem Martín Fierro.
• “Emma Zunz.” A tale of justice and displacement.
• “The House of Asterion.” The inhabitant of an infinite house tells a familiar story.
• “The Other Death.” The subtle effects upon reality when God grants two deaths to the same man.
• “Deutsches Requiem.” A convicted and condemned Nazi chillingly justifies his atrocious actions.
• “Averroës’ Search.” Without a frame of reference, can there be a clear picture of the unknown?
• “The Zahir.” A random memory becomes a destructive spiritual predator.
• “The God’s Script.” In a Spanish prison, an Aztec priest struggles to understand the nature of godhood.
• “Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered In His Labyrinth.” A “closed-room” murder mystery set in the heart of a domestic maze.
• “The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths.” A lost page from the Thousand and One Nights.
• “The Waiting.” An obsessed ex-criminal prepares to meet his enemy.
• “The Man on the Threshold.” A review of a mystery novel concerned with the quest for an unreal person.
• “The Aleph.” A man trying to recreate the world through poetry shows his friend the Universe below a staircase.

Notes on the English Translations of El Aleph
El Aleph has traveled a long and winding road. In the late 1960s, New York’s E.P. Dutton published a survey of Borges’ fiction, much of it still unavailable in English. The series was edited and translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, who worked closely with Borges in Buenos Aires to produce translations “in collaboration with the author.” Working in various sessions from 1967–1972, their goal was to make Borges’ stories “read as though they had been written in English.” Closely connected to Allen Lane and Penguin in the UK, all of Dutton’s editions were published in England shortly after their United States premieres. Eventually Penguin acquired Dutton; but sadly the United States editions were allowed to slip out of print. (This was amended in the late 1990s, when new translations by Andrew Hurley were commissioned by Viking, the imprint of Penguin responsible for first publishing Gravity’s Rainbow.)

Although a translation of Ficciones had been in print since 1962, its successor was still largely unknown to the English-speaking world. Unfortunately, El Aleph presented a bit of a problem, as Dutton could not secure the translation rights for “Los teólogos,” “Deutsches Requiem,” “La busca de Averroës,” and “El Zahir.” Rather than publishing an incomplete book, Dutton decided to produce a collection that would showcase a broader range of Borges’ fiction. The result was 1970’s The Aleph and Other Stories, 1933–1969. Although the majority of its stories were taken from El Aleph, it was fleshed out with pieces from other sources, including new translations of “The Circular Ruins” and “Death and the Compass.” To round off the collection, Borges provided a section of commentary on the stories, and the book ended with “An Autobiographical Essay,” a substantial piece written by Borges in English with the help of di Giovanni. Many of these new translations appeared in the New Yorker during this time, including the autobiographical essay, and over the next few years Dutton and di Giovanni helped cement Borges’ reputation in the United States.

The Aleph and Other Stories, 1933–1969 contains the following works:

• The Aleph
• Streetcorner Man
• The Approach to al-Mu’tasim
• The Circular Ruins
• The Life of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829–1874)
• The Two Kings and Their Two Labyrinths
• The Dead Man
• The Other Death
• Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered In His Labyrinth
• The Man on the Threshold
• The Challenge
• The Captive
• Borges and Myself
• The Maker
• The Intruder
• The Immortals
• The Meeting
• Pedro Salvadores
• Rosendo’s Tale
• An Autobiographical Essay
• Commentaries

After the Dutton Aleph went out of print, American readers were forced to wait until 1998 for Viking’s Collected Fictions, which restored the original stories of El Aleph in new Hurley translations. In 2004, the Aleph stories were finally published as an individual book, Penguin Classic’s The Aleph and Other Stories—although a better title might have been Aleph and the Maker, as this 2004 edition also includes prose pieces from 1960’s El hacedor! Alas, Borges’ “Autobiographical Essay” has yet to be reprinted. That, along with Borges’ own commentary, makes finding a copy of Dutton’s The Aleph and Other Stories worth the effort.

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El hacedor
Dreamtigers

El hacedor
Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores S.A., 1960

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Dreamtigers
Prose translations by Mildred Boyer, poetry translations by Harold Morland. Introduction by Miguel Enguídanos.
University of Texas Press, 1964.

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The Maker (Included in Collected Fictions)
Translation by Andrew Hurley.
Viking, 1998.

In the early 1960s, Borges had finally achieved international fame, and his works were being translated and published in French, English, Italian, and German. Unfortunately for his publishers in Argentina, Borges had not written any new books in several years. As Borges recalled to Richard Burgin in 1967:

I said “I haven’t any book.” And then my editor said to me, “Oh yes you have. If you go through your shelves or drawers you’ll find odds and ends. Maybe a book can be evolved from them.” So I think I remember it was a rainy Sunday in Buenos Aires and I had nothing whatever to do…so I thought I’ll look over my papers. Maybe I’ll find something in my drawers. I found cuttings, old magazines, and then I found that there was the book all ready for me.

That book was El hacedor. A collection of poetry and fragmentary prose, despite its genesis as a “crazy-quilt patchwork,” Borges considered El hacedor to be his most intimate work, and his best. Four years later it was translated into English and published as Dreamtigers, largely to avoid the religious connotations of “The Maker”—a title originally meant to evoke a combination of Homer, the Anglo-Saxon Shaper, God, and the mysteries of creation.

The contents of El hacedor are listed below. Since every poem and narrative from El hacedor is found in Dreamtigers, the English titles are included only when necessary. Unfortunately, Dreamtigers does not contain the Spanish originals. The thirty poems found in Viking’s Selected Poems are marked by an asterisk, and often appear with slightly different English titles. The prose pieces found in Viking’s Collected Fictions are marked by a plus sign (+), and may also have alternate titles. Additionally, a few of the prose narratives have also appeared in Labyrinths!

Part I

• A Leopoldo Lugones (“To Leopold Lugones”)*+
• El hacedor (“The Maker”)*+
• Dreamtigers*+
• Diálogo sobre un diálogo (Dialogue on a Dialogue”)+
• Las uñas (“Toenails”)+
• Los espejos velados (“The Draped Mirrors”)+
• Argumentum ornithologicum+
• El cautivo (The Captive”)+
• El simulacro (The Sham”)+
• Delia Elena San Marco+
• Diálogo de muertos (Dead Men’s Dialogue”)+
• La trama (The Plot”)+
• Un problema (“A Problem”)+
• Una rosa amarilla (“The Yellow Rose”)*+
• El testigo (The Witness”)+
• Martín Fierro+
• Mutations+ [Added to a later edition of El hacedor]
• Parábola de Cervantes y del Quijote (“Parable of Cervantes and Don Quixote”)*+
• Paradiso, XXXI, 108*+
• Parábola del palacio (“Parable of the Palace”)*+
• Everything and Nothing*+
• Ragnarök*+
• Inferno, I, 32+
• Borges y yo (“Borges and I”)*+

Part II

• Poema de los dones (“Poem about Gifts”)*
• El reloj de arena (“The Hourglass”)*
• Ajedrez (“The Game of Chess”)*
• Los espejos (“Mirrors”)*
• Elvira de Alvear
• Susana Soca
• La luna (“The Moon”)*
• La lluvia (“the Rain”)*
• A la efigie de un capitán de los ejércitos de Cromwell (“On the Effigy of a Captain in Cromwell’s Armies”)
• A un viejo poeta (“To an Old Poet”)
• El otro tigre (“The Other Tiger”)*
• Blind Pew
• Alusión a una sombra de mil ochocientos noventa y tantos (“Referring to a Ghost of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Odd”)
• Alusión a la muerte del coronel Francisco Borges (1835–74) (Referring to the Death of Colonel Francisco Borges”)
• In memoriam: A.R.
• Los Borges*
• A Luis de Camoens (“To Luis de Camoëns”)
• Mil novecientos veintitantos (“Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-Odd”)
• Oda compuesta en 1960 (“Ode Composed in 1960”)
• Ariosto y los árabes (“Ariosto and the Arabs”)*
• Al iniciar el estudio de la gramática anglosajona (“On Beginning the Study of Anglo-Saxon Grammar”)*
• Lucas, XXIII “(Luke XXII”)*
• Adrogué*
• Arte poética*
• Museo (“Museum”):
  • Del rigor en la ciencia (“On Rigor in Science”)*+
  • Cuarteta (“Quatrain”)*
  • Límites (“Limits”)*
  • El poeta declara su mombradía (“The Poet Declares His Renown”)*
  • El enemigo generoso (“The Magnanimous Enemy”)*
  • Le regret d’Héraclite (The Regret of Heraclitus”)*
  • In Memoriam J.F.K.+ [Added to the fourth edition of El hacedor, 1964]
• Epílogo (“Epilogue”)*

A brilliant collection of poems, meditative prose fragments, and unsettling parables, the pieces of El hacedor reflect their scattered origin, conjured from exile and suffused with the pensive melancholy of a rainy Sunday afternoon. A dreamy feeling of dislocation and impending revelation drifts through the entire collection, which is marked by surreal turns, ambiguous endings, and a general sense of loss. It is easy to see El hacedor as a mid-career turning point, a farewell to the passions of youth and an acknowledgment of an uncertain future. Its peculiar format helped shape the remainder of Borges’ career, an eclectic convergence of poetry, prose, and parable that would find its most faithful successor in Atlas. It would be nearly a decade until Borges’ next collection of short stories, and those would have an entirely different tone; from this point on, Borges generally considered himself a poet.

Additional Information
Dreamtigers is also detailed under the “Borges Poetry” section of the site, with a greater emphasis on its poetic contents. The entire text of Dreamtigers is available online at The Floating Library.

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Antología Personal
Personal Anthology

Antología Personal
Buenos Aires: Editorial Sur S.A., 1961.

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Personal Anthology
Edited by Anthony Kerrigan, translations by Anthony Kerrigan & others.
New York: Grove Press, 1967.

Published in the United States by Grove Press in 1967, Personal Anthology is exactly what the title declares—Borges personally selected these pieces was a showcase for his work. A combination of short stories, essays, and poetry, the pieces in Personal Anthology were arranged by Borges and Kerrigan to reflect “sympathies and differences” rather than chronological sequence. Personal Anthology bears a similarity to the later Labyrinths, but contains more poetry and less short stories.

• Foreword (by Anthony Kerrigan, Dublin, 1967)
• Prologue (by J. L. Borges, Buenos Aires, 16 August 16, 1961)
• Death and the Compass
• The Plot
• The South
• A Page to Commemorate Colonel Suarez, Victor
• The Dead Man
• Matthew 25:30
• Funes, the Memorious
• A New Refutation of Time
• Limits
• The Circular Ruins
• Chess
• The Golem
• Inferno I, 32
• The Other Tiger
• A Yellow Rose
• Baltasar Gracian
• To an Old Poet
• Parable of the Palace
• The Wall and the Books
• The Enigma of Edward Fitzgerald
• Ariosto and the Arabs
• Averroës’ Search
• A Soldier of Urbina
• The Maker
• Everything and Nothing
• From Someone to No One
• Forms of a Legend
• The Zahir
• The Aleph
• The Cyclical Night
• Allusion to a Ghost of the Eighteen-nineties
• The Tango
• Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz
• The End
• Story of the Warrior and the Captive
• The Captive
• Paradiso XXXI, 108
• Luke 23
• The Witness
• The Modesty of History
• The Secret Miracle
• Conjectural Poem
• The Gifts
• The Moon
• The Art of Poetry
• Borges and I
• Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf
• Editor’s Epilogue: An exchange of letters between Anthony Kerrigan and Alastair Reid

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Labyrinths

Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings
Translated and edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby. Additional translations by Anthony Kerrigan, L. A. Murillo, Dudley Fitts, John M. Fein, Harriet de Onás, and Julian Palley. Introduction by André Maurois.
New York: New Directions, 1962.

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Labyrinths
Modern Library Edition, 1984.

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Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings (Revised)
Introduction by William Gibson.
New York: New Directions, 2007.

Published the same year as Grove Press’ translation of Ficciones, New Direction’s Labyrinths was instrumental in establishing Borges’ reputation in the United States, and was many Americans’ first introduction to Borges. Edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby, Labyrinths gathers together thirteen stories from Ficciones, ten stories from El Aleph, ten essays from Discusión and Otras inquisiciones, and eight “parables” from El hacedor. The stories from Ficciones are different translations from those published by Grove Press, which makes the collection essential for any Borges completist.

 Fictions

• Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
• The Garden of Forking Paths
• The Lottery in Babylon
• Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote
• The Circular Ruins
• The Library of Babel
• Funes the Memorious
• The Shape of the Sword
• Theme of the Traitor and the Hero
• Death and the Compass
• The Secret Miracle
• Three Versions of Judas
• The Sect of the Phoenix
• The Immortal
• The Theologians
• Story of the Warrior and the Captive
• Emma Zunz
• The House of Asterion
• Deutsches Requiem
• Averroes’ Search
• The Zahir
• The Waiting
• The God’s Script

Essays

• The Argentine Writer and Tradition
• The Wall and the Books
• The Fearful Sphere of Pascal
• Partial Magic in the Quixote
• Valéry as Symbol
• Kafka and His Precursors
• Avatars of the Tortoise
• The Mirror of Enigmas
• A Note on (toward) Bernard Shaw
• A New Refutation of Time

Parables

• Inferno, I, 32
• Paradiso, XXXI, 108
• Ragnarök
• Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote
• The Witness
• A Problem
• Borges and I
• Everything and Nothing
• Elegy (Added in 1964) 

The original 1962 edition of Labyrinths borrowed a French preface from the colorful writer André Maurois, and featured an introduction by editor and translator James E. Irby. The 1964 “augmented” edition included a short chronology of Borges’ life, and concluded the book with the poem “Elegy.” In 1984, a hardcover edition was published by the Modern Library. In 2007, New Directions finally revised Labyrinths, updating the chronology, “correcting” the original translations, and replacing the Maurois preface with one penned by science fiction writer William Gibson. They also changed the cover for the first time since John F. Kennedy was president. (I’m actually a bit disappointed by that extravagance, but at least the cover remains black and white!)

Labyrinths was designed as an introduction to Borges, and nearly sixty years later, in remains an ideal place for the beginner to start.

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El informe de Brodie
Doctor Brodie’s Report

El informe de Brodie
Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores S.A., 1970.

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Doctor Brodie’s Report
Translation by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with the author.
New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972.

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Brodie’s Report (Included in Collected Fictions)
Translation by Andrew Hurley.
Viking, 1998.

Brodie’s Report
Translation by Andrew Hurley.
Penguin Classics, 2005.

Originally published as El informe de Brodie on 7 August 1970, these stories were written in the late 1960s in loose collaboration with Norman Thomas di Giovanni. Surprisingly removed from the mind-bending tales of fabulism found in Ficciones and El Aleph, with few exceptions—the most notable being the title story, fashioned after Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels—these stories return to the obsessions of Borges’ youth, and feature a vanished Argentina populated by gauchos, fallen women, tango dancers, and knife-fighting compadritos. All the usual suspects are there, but depicted with more irony and distance than the younger Borges brought to his “fevers” of Buenos Aires.

The original Spanish edition contains the following stories, presented here with their Hurley titles:

• Foreword (by Borges and di Giovanni, Buenos Aires, 29 December 1970)
• The Interloper
• Unworthy
• The Story from Rosendo Juárez
• The Encounter
• Juan Muraña
• The Elderly Lady
• The Duel
• The Other Duel
• Guayaquil
• The Gospel According to Mark
• Brodie’s Report

The first English translation was produced by E.P. Dutton. As with The Aleph and Other Stories, Norman Thomas di Giovanni worked closely with Borges in Buenos Aires to collaborate on translations. As Borges remarks in his foreword, the writing and translation were essentially simultaneous, producing a set of translations born from the same “mood” as the stories themselves. The titles of the Dutton edition—which names the book Doctor Brodie’s Report—are as follows:

• Foreword (by Borges and di Giovanni, Buenos Aires, 29 December 1970)
• Preface to the First Edition (by Borges, Buenos Aires, 19 April 1970)
• The Gospel According to Mark
• The Unworthy Friend
• The Duel
• The End of the Duel
• Rosendo’s Tale
• The Intruder
• The Meeting
• Juan Muraña
• The Elder Lady
• Guayaquil
• Doctor Brodie’s Report
• Afterword (by Borges, Buenos Aires, 29 December 1970)
• Bibliographical Note

This Dutton translation was acquired in the UK by Allen Lane/Penguin, and an Allen Lane UK version came out in 1974. In 1976 it was copyrighted by Penguin, which kept the British book in circulation long after the American original slipped out of print. In 1998 Andrew Hurley produced a new translation for Viking’s Collected Fictions, dropping the “Doctor” from the title. In 2005, Hurley’s translation of Brodie’s Report was published as an individual book by Penguin Classic.

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El libro de arena
The Book of Sand

El libro de arena
Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores S.A., 1975.

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The Book of Sand
Translations by Norman Thomas di Giovanni and Alastair Reid.
New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977.

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The Book of Sand (Included in Collected Fictions)
Translation by Andrew Hurley.
Viking, 1998.

The Book of Sand and Shakespeare’s Memory
Translation by Andrew Hurley.
Penguin Classics, 2007.

Originally published in 1975, the original Spanish edition contains the following stories, presented here with their 1999 Hurley titles:

• The Other
• Ulrikke
• The Congress
• There Are More Things
• The Sect of the Thirty
• The Night of the Gifts
• The Mirror and the Mask
• “Undr”
• A Weary Man’s Utopia
• The Bribe
• Avelino Arredondo
• The Disk
• The Book of Sand
• Afterword (by Borges, Buenos Aires, 3 February 1975)

The story “There Are More Things” is dedicated “To the memory of H.P. Lovecraft,” and is generally considered an interesting but ultimately unsuccessful Lovecraft pastiche. The The English version of this collection was published by E.P. Dutton, with Norman Thomas di Giovanni doing the accustomed translation. Oddly, the Dutton edition included “The Gold of the Tigers,” a section of poetry culled from El oro de los tigers and La rosa profunda and translated by Alastair Reid. The titles of the Dutton edition follow the original, although di Giovanni renders the title of the ninth story more poetically as “Utopia of a Tired Man.” The Dutton edition was published in England by Allen Lane/Penguin in 1979. In 1998 Andrew Hurley produced a new translation for Viking’s Collected Fictions. The UK Penguin version still contains “The Gold of the Tigers.” In 2007, Hurley’s translation of The Book of Sand was bundled with four late Borges stories and published as The Book of Sand and Shakespeare’s Memory by Penguin Classic. Previously only available in Viking’s Collection Fictions, these stories had originally appeared in the Spanish-only Obras Completas 1975-1985. They include “August 25, 1983,” “Blue Tigers,” The Rose of Paracelsus,” and Borges’ final story, “Shakespeare’s Memory.”

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The Library of Babel

The Library of Babel
Translation by Andrew Hurley. Illustrations by Erik Desmazieres.
Boston: David R Godine, 2000.

An illustrated version of Borges’ short story “The Library of Babel” from Ficciones.

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Everything and Nothing

Everything and Nothing
Translations by Donald A. Yates, James E. Irby, and Eliot Weinberger.
New York: New Directions, 1999.

As with Viking’s Collected Fictions, the release of Everything & Nothing coincided with the Borges Centennial. It’s a fairly modest book, collecting some of Borges’ best-known stories and essays. Hardly essential, it makes one wonder why New Directions didn’t take the opportunity to publish an updated, revised and expanded version of Labyrinths instead.

• Introduction (by Donald A. Yates)
• Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote
• Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
• The Lottery in Babylon
• The Garden on Forking Paths
• Death and the Compass
• The Wall and the Books
• Kafka and his Precursors
• Borges and I
• Everything and Nothing
• Nightmares
• Blindness

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Borges Works

Main Page – Return to the Borges Works main page and index.

Nonfiction – Collections of essays and criticism.

Collaborations with Bioy Casares – Fiction and anthologies written or edited with Adolfo Bioy Casares.

Collaborations with Others – Fiction and anthologies written or edited with others.

Poetry I — Early post-ultraísmo poetry, 1923 to 1943.

Poetry II — Mid-career collections from 1944 to 1969.

Poetry III — Late poetry books from 1969 to 1985.

Lectures, Conversations, and Interviews – Collections of Borges’ lectures, conversations, and interviews.

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Author: Allen B. Ruch
Last Modified: 10 August 2019
Main Borges Page: The Garden of Forking Paths
Contact: quail(at)shipwrecklibrary(dot)com