Umberto Eco, himself a literary heir to Jorge Luis Borges, wrote in The Name of the Rose that the books in a library have conversations among themselves. They do, and that is how I came to discover Borges.

I had embarked on what might rightly be called a cognitive science bender earlier in the year, during which I more or less devoured the output of Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, and Douglas Hofstadter on that subject. In Consciousness Explained, Dennett refers in a footnote to Borges’ story, “The Garden of Forking Paths”; in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, the same author motivates much of his discussion of evolution by an analogy to “The Library of Babel.” Pinker kicks off a chapter of The Blank Slate with an extended quotation from “The Lottery in Babylon.” And though Hofstadter (as far as I know) never alludes to Borges directly, such allusions are frankly conspicuous by their absence from Godel, Escher, Bach, inasmuch as a Borges plot, with its cascading frame-stories and dreamed dreamers, is the literary equivalent of an Escher drawing. On top of all these, I also picked up Eco’s aforementioned The Name of the Rose this summer, and learned while reading it that the character of the blind monk Jorge had been inspired by none other than Jorge Luis Borges. With these endorsements of his work, I acquired this collection of short stories, and steeled myself to learn what Borges had written, and whether he deserved the audience of luminaries that he had accrued.

I’ll spare you the suspense: Borges’ reputation is earned. This is the most remarkable collection of short stories I have ever read. It is spellbinding from first page to last.

Reading Borges is an experience not entirely unlike reading H.P. Lovecraft: both have a fondness for invented books, forbidden knowledge, and the irrationality of the cosmos. But a few caveats go along with that statement. First, Borges is not (usually) working self-consciously within the horror genre. Second, Borges is a much better storyteller than Lovecraft is. What Lovecraft attempts to convey by ellipsis—O Reader, what next I saw was indescribable in its repugnance!—Borges achieves with matter-of-fact underdescription. Third, in Borges, the “irrationality of the cosmos” is not revealed at a scale that might at first seem worthy of the name; you have to read to believe that a universe in which the truths of arithmetic are falsified (“Blue Tigers”) can be as unsettling as one of Lovecraft’s monstrous and ambivalent god-things. Finally, reading Borges is a far more intellectually engaging exercise than reading Lovecraft: Borges’ allusions are exquisite, and to make sense of them I made frequent recourse to other books while I was reading this one. As a former literature major, it is almost embarrassing the thrill I still get out of recognizing an allusion, and finding its source sitting on my shelves. Reading Borges is full of those aha!-moments, and I’m sure I came nowhere close to exhausting all of the references contained here.

Of course, not every story in this collection will appeal to every reader. I found that my tolerance for knife-fighter tales ran dry long before my taste for labyrinths and metafictions did. Accordingly, a salutary aspect of this collection is the brevity of the individual pieces. No single story comes in at more than about 15 pages, and most are only 5-6 pages long. So, if I didn’t care for the story I’d just finished, I’d simply go on to the next one, which would only take a few minutes anyway. Of course, if I liked the previous story, it whetted my appetite for more of the same; in this way, my bedtime gradually eroded as I read later and later into the night. My daylight productivity will no doubt improve after I remove this tome from the nightstand and it takes its place on my shelves. This was worth every penny, and I expect to pick up Penguin’s editions of Borges’ selected non-fiction and poetry as well.

If I have to summarise very briefly what I love about this book, it's that it completely redefines what short stories can be. Many of them are not stories - they take non-fiction forms, or deliberately misquote from other books. He plays with form and narrative structure, writes mysteries and detective stories as high literature, and has stories with no real plot at all, just ideas played with at length. And throughout, the voice is compelling and assured, so that you stick with him through all the experiments and deceits and frustrations, just because you want to hear what he has to say next. ( )

Borges is a master of the essay, of short fiction, and a wizard at weaving deeply memorable stories out of his philosophical obsessions. With Neruda, my favorite Latin American writer, certainly my favorite prose writer from the Southern Hemisphere. If you like labyrinths, imaginary worlds, texts, mirrors, and gardens of forking paths (or even if you don't), this book will astound you. ( )

great stories that derive most of their power from Borges' unique imagination and amazing ability to create surreal situations that have serious implications w/r/t thought and existence. ( )

I don't know if I'll ever fully finish this monstrosity. The stories may be short, but every one of them takes some time, and makes you feel accomplished after finishing their two or ten pages. ( )