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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

Table of Contents

Collected FictionsA Universal History of Iniquity (1935)
Preface to the First Edition
Preface to the 1954 Edition
The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell
The Improbable Impostor 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
Index of Sources

Fictions (1944)

The Garden of Forking Paths (1941)
Foreword
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote
The Circular Ruins
The Lottery in Babylon
A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain
The Library of Babel
The Garden of Forking Paths

Artifices (1944)
Foreword
Funes, His Memory
The Shape of the Sword
The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero
Death and the Compass
The Secret Miracle
Three Versions of Judas
The End
The Cult of the Phoenix
The South

The Aleph (1949)
The Immortal
The Dead Man
The Theologians
Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden
A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874)
Emma Zunz
The House of Asterion
The Other Death
Deutsches Requiem
Avveroës' Search
The Zahir
The Writing of the God
Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth
The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths
The Wait
The Man on the Threshold
The Aleph
Afterword

The Maker (1960)
Foreword: For Leopoldo Lugones
The Maker
Dreamtigers
A Dialog About a Dialog
Toenails
Covered Mirrors
Argumentum Ornithologicum
The Captive
The Mountebank
Delia Elena San Marco
A Dialog Between Dead Men
The Plot
A Problem
The Yellow Rose
The Witness
Martin Fierro
Mutations
Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote
Paradiso, XXXI, 108
Parable of the Palace
Everything and Nothing
Ragnarök
Inferno, I, 32
Borges and I

Museum
On Exactitude in Science
In Memoriam, J.F.K.
Afterword

In Praise of Darkness (1969)
Foreword
The Ethnographer
Pedro Salvadores
Legend
A Prayer
His End and His Beginning

Brodie's Report (1970)
Foreword
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 Book of Sand (1975)
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

Shakespeare's Memory (1983)
August 25, 1983
Blue Tigers
The Rose of Paracelsus
Shakespeare's Memory

A Note on the Translation
Acknowledgments
Notes to the Fictions

About the Author

Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires in 1989 and was educated in Europe. One of the most widely acclaimed writers of our time, he published many collections of poems, essays, and short stories before his death in Geneva in June 1986. In 1961 Borges shared the International Publisher's prize with Samuel Beckett. The Ingram Merrill Foundation granted him its Annual Literary Award in 1966 for his "outstanding contribution to literature." In 1971 Columbia University awarded him the first of many degrees of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa (eventually the list included both Oxford and Cambridge), that he was to receive from the English-speaking world. In 1971 he also received the fifth biennial Jerusalem Prize and in 1973 was given one of Mexico's most prestigious cultural awards, the Alfonso Reyes Prize. In 1980 he shared with Gerardo Diego the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish world's highest literary accolade. Borges was Director of the Argentine National Library from 1955 until 1973.

Andrew Hurley (editor/translator) is a translator of numerous works of literature, criticism, history, and memoir. He is professor emeritus at the University of Puerto Rico.

Reviews

A New York Times Notable Book
 
“A marvelous new collection of stories by one of the most remarkable writers of our century.” —The New York Times

“The major work of probably the most influential Latin American writer of the century.” —The Washington Post

“An unparalleled treasury of marvels . . . Along with a tiny cohort of peers, and seers (Kafka and Joyce come to mind), Borges is more than a stunning storyteller and a brilliant stylist; he’s a mirror who reflects the spirit of his time.” —Chicago Tribune

“This book is a real feast, prepared by one of the greatest modern confectioners of sheer fiction.” —The Seattle Times

“An event worth of celebration . . . Hurley deserves our enthusiastic praise for this monumental piece of work.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Beneath Borges’s paradoxical twists and inverted spells there is the deeper, ineffably human magic of all great literature.” —Los Angeles Times

“Borges is the most important Spanish-language writer since Cervantes. . . . To have denied him the Nobel Prize is as bad as the case of Joyce, Proust, and Kafka.” —Mario Vargas Llosa

“Though so different in style, two writers have offered us an image for the next millennium: Joyce and Borges. The first designed with words what the second designed with ideas: the original, the one and only World Wide Web. The Real Thing. The rest will remain simply virtual.” —Umberto Eco

“It is a deep pleasure to read the Collected Fictions of Borges in Andrew Hurley’s capable new version. Old favorites like ‘Death and the Compass’ and ‘The Immortal’ are revivified by Hurley. There is also a particular satisfaction in having all of the stories in one volume.” —Harold Bloom

“What are we to make of him? The economy of his prose, the tact of his imagery, the courage of his thought are there to be admired and emulated. In resounding the note of the marvelous last struck in English by Wells and Chesterton, in permitting infinity to enter and distort his imagination, he has lifted fiction away from the flat earth where most of our novels and short stories still take place.” —John Updike

“When I read a good book, I sometimes like to think I might be capable of writing something similar, but never, in my wildest dreams, could I write anything that approaches the level of cleverness and intellect and madness of Borges. I don’t think anyone could.” —Daniel Radcliffe

Undeniably one of the most influential writers to emerge in this century from Latin America or anywhere else, Borges (1899-1986) is best known for his short stories, all of which appear here for the first time in one volume, translated and annotated by University of Puerto Rico professor Hurley. Many of the stories return to the same set of images and themes that mark Borges's best known work: the code of ethics embraced by gauchos, knifefighters and outlaws; labyrinths; confrontations with one's doppelgänger; and discoveries of artifacts from other worlds (an encyclopedia of a mysterious region in Iraq; a strange disc that has only one side and that gives a king his power; a menacing book that infinitely multiplies its own pages; fragmentary manuscripts that narrate otherworldly accounts of lands of the immortals). Less familiar are episodes that narrate the violent, sordid careers of pirates and outlaws like Billy the Kid (particularly in the early collection A Universal History of Iniquity) or attempts to dramatize the consciousness of Shakespeare or Homer. Elusive, erudite, melancholic, Borges's fiction will intrigue the general reader as well as the scholar. This is the first in a series of three new translations (including the Collected Poems and Collected Nonfictions, all timed to coincide with the centennial of the author's birth), which will offer an alternative to the extensive but very controversial collaborations between Borges and Norman Thomas di Giovanni. First serial rights to the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books and Grand Street. (Sept.)

A New York Times Notable Book

"A marvelous new collection of stories by one of the most remarkable writers of our century." -The New York Times

"The major work of probably the most influential Latin American writer of the century." -The Washington Post Book World

"An unparalleled treasury of marvels . . . Along with a tiny cohort of peers, and seers (Kafka and Joyce come to mind), Borges is more than a stunning storyteller and a brilliant stylist; he's a mirror who reflects the spirit of his time." -Chicago Tribune

"An event worth of celebration . . . Hurley deserves our enthusiastic praise for this monumental piece of work." -San Francisco Chronicle

"Borges is the most important Spanish-language writer since Cervantes. . . . To have denied him the Nobel Prize is as bad as the case of Joyce, Proust, and Kafka." -Mario Vargas Llosa

"When I read a good book, I sometimes like to think I might be capable of writing something similar, but never, in my wildest dreams, could I write anything that approaches the level of cleverness and intellect and madness of Borges. I don't think anyone could." -Daniel Radcliffe