Collected Fictions

by Jorge Luis Borges, Andrew Hurley (Translator)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140286809
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/01/1999
Edition description:	Complete and ed.
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	52,640
Product dimensions:	5.64(w) x 8.36(h) x 1.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

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.

Date of Birth:

August 24, 1899

Date of Death:

June 14, 1986

Place of Birth:

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Place of Death:

Geneva, Switzerland

Education:

B.A., Collège Calvin de Genève, 1914

Read an Excerpt

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

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

What People are Saying About This

Mario Vargas Llosa

One of the most memorable artists of our age.

John Updike

He has lifted fiction away from the flat earth where most of our novels and short stories still take place.

From the Publisher

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

“The major work of probably the most influential Latin American writer of the century.” —Michael Dirda, 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.” —Melvin Jules Bukiet, Chicago Tribune

“An event worth of celebration . . . Hurley deserves our enthusiastic praise for this monumental piece of work.” —William Hjortsberg, 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

 

Editorial 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

From the Publisher

★ 10/01/2014
This retrospective marks the first time that all the narratives (stretching over 50 years) of this canonical writer have been updated and compiled in one volume in English.

Library Journal

Borges is considered by many to be one of the most important fiction writers of the twentieth century, a very intellectual writer and thinker. Narrator Castulo Guerra, however, finds in these stories considerable depths of emotion and humanity, and delivers them to listeners. The world of Borges's fiction is varied and strange, drawing on science fiction, folklore, philosophy, and more, but immersing oneself in this audiobook makes many of the themes and connections clear. Guerra's English is excellent, with just enough of an Argentine accent to remind listeners where most of the stories are set. A detailed knowledge of Latin American history would be rewarded but is not necessary; an openness to new ways of seeing the world is more useful. D.M.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2023 - AudioFile

International literary icon Jorge Luis Borges has been called be the greatest Spanish-language writer of this century. Now, for the first time in English, all of Borges's magical fictions are collected in a single volume -- from his 1935 debut with The Universal History of Iniquity through his immensely influential collections Fictions and The Aleph, up to his final work in the 1980s, the previously uncollected Shakespeare's Memory. In Andrew Hurley's vivid new translations, familiar stories such as "Funes, His Memory," "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," and "The Library of Babel" will delight longtime Borges fans and captivate a new generation of readers. Published on the eve of the centenary of Borges's birth, Collected Fictions is the first book in a projected three-volume compendium of Borges's works that will include a collection of his poetry and a selection of his nonfiction writings.

Readers familiar with Borges's fictions will find in Hurley's new translation a uniquely Borgesian twist: Just as Borges's Pierre Menard struggled to recompose Miguel de Cervantes' Quixote from a remove of three centuries, only to find that verbatim passages had taken on a new context, a new reading of these stories invests them with their own new meanings and contexts. Similarly, knowing that Borges intended "The Library of Babel" as a nightmarish allegory for the nine years he spent cataloging the holdings of a municipal library puts a new, earthbound spin on this intricate fantasy. Certain aspects of Hurley's translation may shock the seasoned reader: The story that has long appeared under the title "Funes the Memorious" has here been changed to "Funes, His Memory." Despite the argument Hurley makes for changing the title, the neologism "memorious" is certainly more sonorous and better recalls the Spanish ("Funes el memorioso").

However titled, "Funes" is a brilliant exposition of the limitations of language and the Heraclitean philosophy that all is change and becoming, that "you can never step into the same river twice."

bn.com

A Borges invention can start anywhere...it always takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride into some previously unsuspected dimension.
—The Atlantic Monthly

Phoebe-Lou Adams

Marvelous...one of the most remarkable writers of our century. —The New York Times

Richard Bernstein

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 doppelganger; 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. (PW best book of 1998)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A collection of all of the Latin American writer's stories, from 1935 through 1983, in new translation. A section of notes on the stories reveals insights in Argentinian history, literature, and culture. Includes the previously uncollected Shakespeare's Memory (1983). This is the first installment of the publisher's three-volume publication project of the works of Borges. No index. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

A Borges invention can start anywhere...it always takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride into some previously unsuspected dimension.
— The Atlantic Monthly

Phoebe-Lou Adams

Some [of these stories] stand among the great short fiction of the century....There was no one like Borges.
— The New York Times Book Review

Mavis Gallant

Dazzling. . .Collected Fictions gathers together all of Borges' fictions, newly translated with stylish scrupulosity by Andrew Hurley.
— The Wall Street Journal

Jamie James

An unparalleled treasury of marvels...Borges is more than a stunning storyteller and a brilliant stylist, he's a human mirror who reflects the spirit of his time.
— Chicago Tribune Books

Melvin Jules Bukiet

Marvelous...one of the most remarkable writers of our century.
— The New York Times

Richard Bernstein

It offers, in one volume and in a fine translation by Andrew Hurley, all of Borges's remarkable and often indelible meditations on time, memory, infinity, the meaning of life, the value of art, chance, morality, and other subjects that are as fit for philosophical as for literary investigation.
— Commentary

Marc Berley

Mirrors, labyrinths, libraries, gardens, doppelgangers, knife fights, and tigers recur memorably in these witty, colorful tales that have exerted an incalculable influence on the past half-century's fiction. For this first installment in a projected three-volume series of Borges' work (to be followed by poetry and nonfiction collections), translator-editor Hurley has included the contents of seven previously published books (notably, the seminal Ficciones), plus previously untranslated work from the '80s (of which Shakespeare's Memory most successfully recapitulates Borges' urbane bridging of temporal and imaginary 'worlds').

Gloriously ruminative and bookish, Borges's teasing fictions skillfully absorb the influences of his native Argentina's indigenous folktales, various world mythologies, Anglo-Saxon verse, Icelandic saga, Poe, Cervantes, and Chesterton, along with numerous other literary touchstones. Among the best: the arcane pseudo-history of an imaginary planet ('Tlon, Ugbar, Orbus Tertius'); a memorable realization of Borges's credo that all 'new' stories are inevitably old ones retold ('Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote'); a clever lampooning of the author's own polymathism ('Funes the Memorious'); and a supremely ingenious detective story ('Death and the Compass'). Authoritative testimony to the virtues of eclecticism and cosmopolitanism, and a matchless gift to readers that belongs, as the old saying goes, in every library.

Kirkus Reviews

Impossible, impassable. I am only able to read about one in every ten of these 101 stories before I give up in frustration. It's probably that I'm just not smart enough. Though I am reminded of Calvino, I am also reminded of Poe-without the ease or immediacy of either. The well-written entries show an erudite mind and a lush, wonderful, absolutely wild imagination. In order to sink my teeth into it, I need to immerse quite fully. So while Señor B. will be relieved to know that he is a definite desert-island pick, he'll be sad to learn that he's not a hey-we-gotta-get-to-basketball-practice-in-twenty-minutes-so-feed-the-dog-and-remember-to-drop-off-the-rent-on-they-way type pick. Did I tell you to feed the dog? Because she has to go out. Like, now. If I were recommending his fiction, and I am, I'd go with the classic Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. You can get the damned thing for a penny on the Internet, which is itself a miracle. [Out of print; available used online.—Ed.] Douglas Lord, "Books for Dudes", Booksmack!, 12/2/10

Library Journal - Booksmack!

This collection, featuring a master storyteller, a diverse mix of tales, and a skilled narrator, makes for an interesting audio experience for the devoted listener. The reliable George Guidall offers varied voices to suit each story’s cast, and he seems genuinely absorbed by the works, as indicated by his enthusiastic delivery. The recording itself retains a tinny quality, not unlike the audiobooks of yesteryear, and this can make for fatiguing listening. Also, Borges’s subtlety and dreamlike prose can get lost between the page and the ear, making the listener long to slow Guidall down and ask him to repeat certain lines. Fans of Borges will embrace this recording; newcomers may do better to begin with the printed text. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2010 - AudioFile