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Collected Fictions

by Jorge Luis Borges, Andrew Hurley (translator)

4.61 of 5 stars 4.61 · rating details · 9,089 ratings · 476 reviews

The New York Times bestseller, "a marvelous new collection of stories by . . . one of the most remarkable writers of our century" --Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century. Now for the first time in English, all of Borges' dazzling fictions are gathered into a single volume, brilliantly tran...more

Paperback, 565 pages

Published September 30th 1999 by Penguin Books Ltd (first published January 1st 1989)

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May 03, 2013 Mala rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: brain-pain-group-read, all-time-favourites, classic-ever-enduring-appeal

Review of Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
Shelf: Latin American writing,Classic-ever-enduring-appeal,Brain Pain group read.
Recommended for: Brainy ones.

You who read me—are you certain you understand my language?

Imagine you are watching a highly recommended,multiple awards winning,foreign-language film- it's everything you expected it to be,then,suddenly,the subtitles stop working- how irritating! But you are hooked; you can't stop watching– welcome to the Borgesian Labyrinth!

The Collected...more

19 likes · like · see review

Mar 08, 2011 Alex rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: particularly-drunk-reviews, 2011, metafiction, reading-through-history, unreliable-narrators, books-about-hamlet

Deep in Don Quixote, for a while I convinced myself that Cervantes had written the footnotes too, and the Quixote commentators the editor cited were actually made up by Cervantes. He messes with you like that: he plays so many tricks that you end up thinking anything is possible.

Four months later I pick up Borges, and...here he is doing exactly that. Writing essays about imaginary books, with footnotes pointing to other imaginary commenters on the same imaginary books. Layer on layer of fiction....more

16 likes · like · see review

Jun 22, 2008 Yulia rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

Borges is a literary mathematician but he has no understanding of the human heart. Still, it's impossible not to be curious what his equations create.

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Feb 13, 2011 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars

There are few other writers whose work has lingered in my mind to the same degree as has Borges. His short stories are a metaphysical perfume whose aroma, so startling and heady upon the first inhalation, arises, unbidden, at certain points of thought or recollection, working its peculiar and powerful transformative and transfigurative memes upon the seemingly stolid principles that order our universe. The Library of Babel wrenches the brain like a sudden stop upon a dreamy hexagonal rollercoast...more

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Oct 10, 2007 Nathaniel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: semifiction

My favorite tidbit about Borges is that he has been written into other authors' stories more than just about any other 20th century author. Neil Gaiman's Destiny and his Garden of Forking Paths, Umberto Eco's mad monk Jorge of Burgos, Zampanò from House of Leaves - and those are just the ones I've come across in my own reading. I'm sure the real Borges (should one miraculously manage to find him distinct from all the "false" Borgeses) would be amused to find that he has become an archetype. But...more

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Jun 09, 2007 L1w0lf rated it 5 of 5 stars

Borges is a name that's thrown about quite frequently in 'intellectual' circles. I heard his name from a friend who used to constantly claim that Borges was the greatest author never to win the Nobel Prize. I was intrigued and bought this particular book, an English translation from the original Spanish of this Argentinian writer.

First thing I realized was, that the guy who recommended Borges had never really read a word of Borges! Because he never told me what these stories were *really* about,...more

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Oct 13, 2008 Mara rated it 5 of 5 stars

I had to return this to the library before I could fully finish it, but it gave me some real "food for thought" as they say, when it comes to writing. Borges breaks every writing rule in the book, "Show don't tell", "Center on your protagonist" "Begin with action, not exposition" and shows that the rules are for neophytes to "tolerable-up" their writing, not for a master whose rare gift transcends any finger-waggling from stuffy rule-makers. Borges writes like a fascinating dinner party guest wh...more

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Oct 25, 2008 Trevor rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature

When I was at university we had to read this guy. Look, to be honest I didn’t really like him at the time. He seemed pompous and too clever by half. I liked some of his stuff – the story that begins this collection ‘Borges and I’ is marvelous and even that younger version of me could see just how great that was as a piece of writing. I’ll see if I can’t attach it to the end of this.

When I tried to read Labyrinths I became increasingly confused and annoyed. He was talking about endless libraries...more

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Dec 20, 2008 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, short-stories

There are no two ways about it, in my mind Jorge Luis Borges is the greatest short story writer to ever live. I have never read any of his longer works, but I have also never read short stories written by anyone else that can hold a candle to Borges' obvious talent with the medium. He can weave the patterns for a momentous revelation in the mind of the reader without them even knowing what her is doing. After reading his better stories you an do nothing but sit and marvel at what has just happen...more

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Oct 03, 2007 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: All

The absolute bible...a twisting labryinth that changes everytime you read it and slowly infects all you read.

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Apr 25, 2010 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: mirrors, labyrinths, and knife fighters

Recommended to Mike by: Jason Smith

The first time I met the master it was in a dream—for what is youth but nocturnal fancy of old age. His face was covered in stone, like an idol. Neither of us spoke. We may have been in a place where words were forbidden or impossible. In haste, fearful of the dawn, I stripped his features with a cast-iron chisel. They say the barbarian quarries what he occupies in order to supplant the defeated power with his own, and that history (and biography) is created to make secret this recurrent canniba...more

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Jul 13, 2009 Nicholas rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-i-quit

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jul 22, 2008 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is the complete fiction writings of Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. My initial disclaimer is that there is no way to do justice to a work of this magnitude in a single review, just as there is no way to do it justice after only a first reading.

Anyone who has read Borges will recognize common objects that show up continually in his writings such as labyrinths, gauchos, knife fights, war, jaguars, and books (some of which are fabricated).

For those with little knowlege of the history...more This book is the complete fiction writings of Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. My initial disclaimer is that there is no way to do justice to a work of this magnitude in a single review, just as there is no way to do it justice after only a first reading.

Anyone who has read Borges will recognize common objects that show up continually in his writings such as labyrinths, gauchos, knife fights, war, jaguars, and books (some of which are fabricated).

For those with little knowlege of the history of South America, the 19th Century seemed to be a time of constant political turmoil and warfare. Borges addresses this in several stories. The sheer brutality and nihilism that are portrayed in these stories tend to make the modern reader feel like he has been dropped into the land of post apocalypse, not historical fiction. Obviously these stories give some insight into man's ruminations on mortality at its end.

Many of Borges' other tales involve the magic of the intellectual life. This is where things such as labyrinths, dopplegangers, jaguars, mysterious books and secret names of God figure prominently. Overall, the stories that fell into this category were probably my favorites. This is the category that I would include what is probably the most anthologized story in the collection, 'The Garden of Forking Paths'. SOme of these stories do not seem engaging initially, but usually the last couple of paragraphs provide a nice twist or missing puzzle piece that makes it all worthwhile.

Essentially, what I think Borges does with his fiction is to present the things that an armchair intellectual thinks about when the mundane, daily world recedes from his vision. I'm not saying this in a negative way, because I greatly enjoyed those visions and believe that there is room for everyone at the dinner table.

Notice that I have been very gender bias in this review. The reason for this is that I noticed a distinct lack of women presented throughout most of these works. It's all gauchos, soldiers, and male intellectuals, with very few women and very little in the way of normal social interactions. I don't know, but I would assume that this is because Borges was writing what he knew. Whether this would effect how a female reader views his fiction is a question that I find interesting.

Another enlightening moment for me while reading this book were the translation notes by this volume's translator, Andrew Hurley, where he discusses the pitfalls of translation. He reveals that his idea of a translation is the same as Borges', who was also a translator during his career. That idea is that a translator does not produce a replacement for the original work, but instead merely produces another version in a continuing body of work. What this means is that although every translation of a non-English work may have a few subtle problems, they all provide a legitimacy in understanding the original work. Prior to being presented with this idea, I was always suspicious of any translation (as I may have mentioned in a Kafka review some time back). I believe the reason for this had to do with all of the translations that I have read over the years where the translator feels the need to write a Forward that basically said "...the last guy's version sucked, here's my version, which is totally accurate...". With my new found insight, I will now read translations of non-English works in a new way. As for future translators who want to be scornful of their predecessors, I offer the words of a thinkerof the late 20th Century, Rodney King, who said "Can't we all just get along?". (less)

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Jul 11, 2008 Krishan rated it 5 of 5 stars

What to say about these stories? They are all fables of one sort or another. Stores of writers, thinkers, gods, historical figures, prisoners, criminals, duelers, mythological creatures. The stories concise and exacting explorations of mythology, paradox, infinity, theology, philosophy, history.

In each story, Borges takes and idea and refracts and reflects it through a hall of prisms and mirrors. The result tears a rent in the fabric of your mind, opening up new spaces and new ideas, connecting...more

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Nov 06, 2007 Audrey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Borges offers me a place to sit and wonder with myself. I love somewhat exotic and fantastical worlds that are based in sense. This is what he offers.

The other thing that I love about Borges is his totally playful attitude. I don't know if I actually have a visual image of him in my head or not. But when I think of the author, or think of some of his better stories "The Lottery in Babylon." or "The Garden of Forking Paths" among others that other people have mentioned time and again I see eyes...more

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Feb 26, 2013 Bettie marked it as onhold

Selected Fictions:

The Garden of Forking Paths
Man on Pink Corner
The Library of Babel

#56 TBR Busting 2013

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Nov 15, 2011 Jeanmccoy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Well I used t have all the book from Borges in Spanish, that was, until one of my boxes was lost when moving apartments. To my dismay the box that contain his books were lost. Alas the Aleph and other Stories managed to sneak to another box, but Labyrinths was lost forever and I can only hope it’s somewhere where the book can be read and not in a dumpster. The later faith would be a tragedy, the first an act of a comedic destiny.
I’ve read all of his publications in Spanish, and I am sure there...more Well I used t have all the book from Borges in Spanish, that was, until one of my boxes was lost when moving apartments. To my dismay the box that contain his books were lost. Alas the Aleph and other Stories managed to sneak to another box, but Labyrinths was lost forever and I can only hope it’s somewhere where the book can be read and not in a dumpster. The later faith would be a tragedy, the first an act of a comedic destiny.
I’ve read all of his publications in Spanish, and I am sure there are great translators out there but there are few writers that share the same knowledge of words and writing like Borges. Part of Borges depth lies in his ability to pick apart sentences. In his later days when he went blind friends use to read him what he wanted to read. His friends recalled it was very difficult to read him because “He would interrupt very often to make notes about the writing, he would say ‘Ha if he would have use this word instead of this one the whole meaning would have change. If he would have use this one the meaning would be have been better’ of course when he would interrupt us he was always right.” Borges built labyrinths with his writing to the point that one single word can change or decrease the depth of the poem or story. This to me is very risky for every translator.

I was blessed with the ability to have Spanish has my first language and reading Borges was an ordeal. I recall drowning myself on etymology books, cartography, Argentinean culture, and mathematics in order to be at part (to a minimal extent) with Borges, and all of this in Spanish. Having lost all books I was given three collection books in English of his work. I though, “Great!” but after reading the aleph and other stories in Fictions I discovered his translation though flowing lack the verisimilitude of the original. I doubt myself thinking it could have been the time I have not read Borges that was playing games, but when I read his poems and compared the English translations I understood the word choice was distant to the one of Borges.
These collected books of Borges poems, fictions and non fictions are I guess a good reference on his works to have if you have none, but I highly recommend other translations or even better learning Spanish in order to know Borges depth to an even deeper level just like I had to read Dante’s Inferno in Italian to truly appreciate it. Give this a try, and if you like Borges get other translations you will understand why.(less)

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Feb 16, 2011 Kristyn rated it 5 of 5 stars

Published in 1998, Jorge Luis Borges' Collected Fictions brings all of his short works together in one mind-bending, though-provoking volume. Widely regarded as one of the great writers of Latin America, his short stories are as interesting today as they were when first published in French in the 1950's.

Collected Fictions is not a book written for those looking for an easy read. This is not due to Borges' writing style – indeed, his prose is lyrical and flows beautifully, and his descriptions ar...more Published in 1998, Jorge Luis Borges' Collected Fictions brings all of his short works together in one mind-bending, though-provoking volume. Widely regarded as one of the great writers of Latin America, his short stories are as interesting today as they were when first published in French in the 1950's.

Collected Fictions is not a book written for those looking for an easy read. This is not due to Borges' writing style – indeed, his prose is lyrical and flows beautifully, and his descriptions are neither spare nor overwhelming. Rather, it is the subjects of his stories that are not meant for the casual reader. Borges delights in writing about impossibilities – infinite libraries, books that have neither a beginning nor end, meeting one's doppelganger and slowly becoming less certain who is the original – these are all topics that Borges gleefully investigates in his works.

And investigate he does, with sudden quirks in the story that are so unexpected as to seem almost impossible – but when you're already reading a story of the impossible, those quirks don't seem so very out of place. Borges plays with the reader's perception of reality, and with apparent ease – he seamlessly grafts the impossible nature of these worlds onto concrete details that help it masquerade as reality. It is easy to think that, if he were as gifted with maths as he is with fiction, Borges would have become the new Einstein.

Of the stories that are presented in Collected Fictions, there are a few that stand out as works of fiction. The Garden of Forking Paths, The Library of Babel, and The Book of Sand are among these, each presenting a logical impossibility that nevertheless feels as though it ought to be possible, just through Borges' seamless integration. The Garden of Forking Paths tangles with ideas of alternate realities, parallel time-lines, and the choices a person makes, all couched in a detective/war story. The Library of Babel places us in a completely different world, where the only thing is the Library itself, and the infinite books it possesses – almost all of them gibberish, but with the occasional word or sentence that is translatable. The Book of Sand again deals with books and the concept of infinity, but this time is singular. There is only one book, without beginning and without end, and the man who comes to posses it finds that his the awe with which he first regarded it eventually comes to horror – he cannot stop thinking about the impossibility of the book, and so eventually hides it away.

Although Collected Fictions is just over five hundred pages long, each work of fiction is short, with few over ten pages. This allows the reader a period of rest after reading one – a moment for them to reflected on the nature of the story, on their perceptions on reality, and perhaps to reread it to further understand what, exactly, is happening in these miniature universes Borges has so carefully constructed. So well-crafted are his stories and so elegant his prose, it is a sad wonder that Borges was never recognized by the Nobel committee – he is, as I firmly believe, one of the finest writers of his age.(less)

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Mar 17, 2010 Erik Graff rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Erik by: Michael Miley

Shelves: literature

My great-great grandparents built a cottage in Lake Charter Twp., Michigan during WWI. Father sold the thirty acres in the middle of the eighties. The payments were to be in three parts, over three years. I took this information to the township supervisor and negotiated deal that I'd be allowed use of the property during the interim in exchange for some services. Then, when the final payment was made, I approached the supervisor again, offering to continue working on their behalf if they'd let m...more

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Jun 06, 2012 Andy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-time-favorites, fiction, short-stories, weird, unusual-narration, translations-into-english

Amazing, wonderful, fantastic, throw every positive superlative you can find at this collection. Borges is a marvel of a writer. This lovely deckle-cut volume is a comprehensive assembly of Borges's short stories. There's a staggering amount of great stuff in here and all I can do is advise you, if you have never read Borges before, to go do so right away.

Borges is almost mathematical in his writings. He writes about infinites and infinitesimals, puzzles, memories, perceptions, alternate realit...more

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Jul 23, 2011 Ronald Wise rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is an enjoyable introduction to the fiction of the man many consider to be the greatest Spanish-language writer of the 20th century. It contains the short stories originally printed in his collections from the 1935 through the early 1980s. Many of his stories are fictional confabulations of news, historical, or mythological items, such that the transition into his imagination is difficult to discern. Borges inserts himself into some of his tales and begins many of them as though relaying a...more

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Mar 05, 2010 Dave rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a must read. The definitive collection of all of Borges stories (no poetry) from 1935 to 1983. It's all here, his reality-bending "Ficciones (reinventing the short story),"The Aleph" (a metaphysical delight), all the way to his last ruminations on death and consciousness in "Shakespeare's Memory". Gauchos, knife-fights, labyrinths, tigers, miraculous disks, retold legends, infinite libraries, simultaneous dreams...you get the idea. Some stories are mini-epics, others, a mere paragraph. S...more

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Jul 02, 2011 Maria D'alessandro rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: i-ve-read-what-i-needed-to-of-this

I love Borges' ideas. Much of the writing itself is not engaging for me. Borges doesn't approach fiction in the same ways that I do. In fact I almost get the sense that he disdains it at times. He doesn't bring the readers close and deals more often in myths and philosophy than in character driven fiction. However, i have only read the stories from this collection that my teacher chose based on certain themes we were discussing therefore I do not speak about the book in its entirety. Another imp...more

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Jun 27, 2012 Andrew Bertaina rated it 5 of 5 stars

Borges is good. His collections, ficciones and The Aleph are pretty much virtuoso displays of short story writing. However, saying that Borges is an excellent shorty story writer is to kind of miss the boat. He doesn't write in the typical fashion of a realist. He's not a fabulist either. He has his own particular style, the fantastic is wedded to the autobiographical, the detective novel, theology, and philosophical speculations. His story, "The Gospel of Mark," that was a part of the New Yorke...more

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May 10, 2013 Dale rated it 5 of 5 stars

Not exactly an easy read but this collection provides intrigue and fascination throughout. Borges’ fictions are hardly conventional short story narratives (perhaps the closest to a conventional tale comes in ‘Death and the Compass’, which is a form of detective story), they are more works of philosophy through supposition. For this reason the collection is aptly named ‘Fictions’ – rather than say ‘Collected Stories’. Borges expertly conjures a sense of historical reality on the page while never...more

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Jul 28, 2009 Doreen rated it 4 of 5 stars

I liked this book overall, with the exception of the collection titled Garden Of Forking Paths, which was so pretentious that if I hadn't already been familiar with some of his other work, I might have put down the book right there. As it is, this is a great collection for Borges' fans and completists, but for those new to his work, I would strongly recommend getting some familiarity with the gaucho ballad Martin Fierro, because he references it a lot. Otherwise, his work stands strong on its ow...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Will rated it 5 of 5 stars

Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius:
"For example: there is no noun that corresponds to our word "moon," but there is a verb which in english would be 'to moonate' or 'to enmoon.' 'The moon rose above the river is... 'Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned.' "
"There are famous poems composed of a single enormous word; this word is a 'poetic object' created by the poet. The fact that no one believes in the reality expressed by these nouns means, paradoxically, that there is no limit to their number. The...more

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Jun 24, 2012 Michael Kneeland rated it 5 of 5 stars

Borges's intellectual strength is, to my mind, matched by only a few select writers and thinkers from the Western literary tradition; though Shakespeare haunts him--as Shakespeare haunts everyone--he strikes me as having intellectual affinities to Joyce, a contemporary of his. Just as Joyce developed new possibilities for narrative structure, Borges developed new possibilities for fiction in general: "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," the first Borges piece I read, does not even appear to be a work o...more

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Feb 21, 2011 Brandon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Notes on Borges:

Favorite Stories:
Library of Babel
The Immortal
Funes, the Memorious
The Aleph
Inferno, I, 32
Blue Tigers
Shakespeare's Memory

"Homer composed the *Odyssey*; given infinite time, with infinite circumstances and changes, it is impossible that the *Odyssey should *not* be composed at least once. No one is someone; a single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, hero, philosopher, demon, and world--which is a long-winded way of saying that *I am not.*"

The Immortal (p191...more

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May 29, 2008 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars

There is more inspiration in a page of Borges than there is in most novels. Borges is the architect of a world in which strange heresies prevailed, the structures of infinite libraries unfold and strange cultures stand by to infest our reality with their compelling memes. This book will blow the prepared mind unlike no other that I know. Essential.

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Brain Pain: Discussion - Week Four - Borges - The Circular Ruins	12	19	13 hours, 42 min ago
Brain Pain: * Questions, Resources, & General Banter - Borges Stories	85	52	13 hours, 46 min ago
Brain Pain: Discussion - Week Three - Borges - Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote	72	26	May 11, 2013 01:39pm
Brain Pain: Discussion - Week Two - Borges - The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim	28	24	May 02, 2013 09:36am
Brain Pain: Discussion - Week One - Borges - Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius	37	33	Apr 28, 2013 02:54am
Brain Pain: * Schedule for Discussions - Borges Stories	1	45	Mar 10, 2013 01:12am

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About Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (Spanish pronunciation: [xoɾxe lwis boɾxes]) was an Argentine writer and poet born in Buenos Aires. In 1914, his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school and traveled to Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in Surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. Bo...more

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“I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.” — 49 people liked it

“He consorted with prostitutes and poets...and with persons even worse.” — 20 people liked it

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