Collected Fictions - Softcover

Borges, Jorge Luis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140286802 ISBN 13: 9780140286809

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1999

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Contents

A 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
Averroës’ 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 Juarez
The Encounter
Juan Murafta
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

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140286802
• ISBN 13: 9780140286809
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 565