Fictions, Borges

Collection of 17 short stories written by Jorge Luis Borges.

I read this because I’d heard of and read “The Library of Babel” and “The South” before, which are short stories included in the selection and wanted to see what else Borges had written. “The Library of Babel” and “The South” is still my favourite, and I found some of the other stuff hard to read. I think the whole fictional essay about a fictional author writing fictional books is a bit too much for my CS brain…

Here’s the list of stories included, with some very basic descriptions about each ones. I’ve starred the ones I particularly enjoyed. Warning! Spoilers ahead.

• The Garden of Forking Paths
  • “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, about a made-up world.
  • “The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim”, about a made-up novel.
  • “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”, about this person who wants to live the plot of Don Quixote.
  • ⭐️ “The Circular Ruins”, about a man who wants to dream another person into existence.
    • “The faces of those farthest away hung at many centuries’ distance and at a cosmic height, yet they were absolutely clear.”
  • ⭐️ “The Lottery in Babylon”, about a lottery that slowly becomes woven into everything.
    • “If the Lottery is an intensification of chance, a periodic infusion of chaos into the cosmos, then is it not appropriate that chance intervene in every aspect of the drawing, not just one?”
  • “An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain”, another weird fake essay about a made-up author.
  • ⭐️⭐️ “The Library of Babel”, about an infinite library.
    • “…I am preparting to die, a few leagues from the hexagon where I was born. When I am dead, compassionate hands will throw me over the railing; my tomb will be the unfathomable air, my body will sink for ages, and will decay and dissolve into the wind engendered by my fall, which shall be infinite.”
  • “The Garden of Forking Paths”, about someone running away from someone and then reading a weird novel.
• Artifices
  • “Funes the Memorious”, about a person who has an accident and can then remember everything.
  • ⭐️ “The Form of the Sword”, about how somebody got their scar.
    • “…it is I who am Vincent Moon. Now, despise me.”
  • “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero”, a spooky murder mystery where literature inspires history.
  • “Death and the Compass”, a spooky detective story.
  • ⭐️ “The Secret Miracle”, about a prisoner who wants to finish a play they have been writing before they are executed.
    • “…only a single epithet was left to be decided upon now. He found it; the drop of water rolled down his cheek. He began a maddened cry, he shook his head, and the fourfold volley felled him.”
  • “Three Versions of Judas”, about a made up author who wrote books on interpretations of Judas.
  • “The End”, about a man who watches a fight.
  • “The Sect of the Phoenix”, about a secret society.
  • ⭐️⭐️ “The South”, about a man who cuts his head and then travels south.
    • “As he crossed the threshold, he felt that on that first night in the sanatorium, when they’d stuck that needle in him, dying in a knife fight under the open sky, grappling with his adversary, would have been a liveration, a joy, and a fiesta.”
    • There’s another interpretation of this one where everything after he is committed to the sanatorium is him dreaming his ideal death.