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104th out of 312 books
—
310 voters
A Universal History of Iniquity
In his writing, Borges always combined high seriousness with a wicked sense of fun. Here he reveals his delight in re-creating (or making up) colorful stories from the Orient, the Islamic world, and the Wild West, as well as his horrified fascination with knife fights, political and personal betrayal, and bloodthirsty revenge. Sparkling with the sheer exuberant pleasure of...more
Paperback, 112 pages
Published
July 27th 2004
by Penguin Classics
(first published 1935)
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This is a collection of stories about international criminals—redeemable and irredeemable; loveable and unloveable; historical and fictional. Gallows and pirates fill its pages. Borges published these nine stories in 1935 and, Borges states that these “exercises in narrative prose” were inspired by his reading of Chesteron and Stevenson and that these stories are in the “baroque style” that “flaunts and squanders.”
The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell An amoral entrepreneur charges slave to help th...more
The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell An amoral entrepreneur charges slave to help th...more
kronologis kejadian:
14.35, sebuah mal di jogja tralala:
"Borges! 7.500 rupiah sadja! iyyeiy!"
16.45, sebuah rumah di sleman trilili:
"iyeiy! Borges!"
(buka halaman pertama)
"err.."
(halaman-halaman berikutnya)
"oh no.. not anymore."
terjemahannya bikin nangis...
14.35, sebuah mal di jogja tralala:
"Borges! 7.500 rupiah sadja! iyyeiy!"
16.45, sebuah rumah di sleman trilili:
"iyeiy! Borges!"
(buka halaman pertama)
"err.."
(halaman-halaman berikutnya)
"oh no.. not anymore."
terjemahannya bikin nangis...
Apparently the term "magical realism" movement began here.
Original real criminal stories altered.
But Borges himself criticizes it: "when art flaunts and squanders its resources"; "the irresponsible sport of a shy sort of man who could not bring himself to write short stories, and so amused himself by changing and distorting (sometimes without aesthetic justification) the stories of other men"; "under all the storm and lightning, there is nothing."
My first Borges read, i really liked it even if h...more
Original real criminal stories altered.
But Borges himself criticizes it: "when art flaunts and squanders its resources"; "the irresponsible sport of a shy sort of man who could not bring himself to write short stories, and so amused himself by changing and distorting (sometimes without aesthetic justification) the stories of other men"; "under all the storm and lightning, there is nothing."
My first Borges read, i really liked it even if h...more
I somehow managed to get a BA with a focus on comparative literature and continental philosophy and then a PhD with a focus on twentieth century literature without reading any Borges. How did that happen? Well, any time I tried to read South American 'magical realist' literature I broke out in hives of boredom, and I thought maybe Borges was to blame; in addition, I thought, and still think, that Borges might be responsible in part for recent developments in the anglo-american literature of conc...more
Writing a long review seems an exercise of redundancy to me: there are already many reviews in english and any spanish speaking reader worth his salt already worships Borges (if not the case, just go and read him and stop reading reviews).
Suffice to say that this is his first work, a compendium of fictional criminal chronicle he did for a newspaper. It is entertaining, of course: that is the purpose of such newspaper sections. The great merit of these stories lies not the -quite generic- content...more
Suffice to say that this is his first work, a compendium of fictional criminal chronicle he did for a newspaper. It is entertaining, of course: that is the purpose of such newspaper sections. The great merit of these stories lies not the -quite generic- content...more
Entertaining! I tended to like the earlier stories more; Lazarus Morell, Tom Castro. Also the Court Surveyor. The other ones seemed much less interesting, especially Monk Eastman, who didn't capture me at all.
Man On Pink Corner is the first 'original' story Borges ever published, yes? I like it, though it is a very odd shift in style from the rest of the book. Not incredibly impressed, however, because the twist doesn't occur because Borges is giving us a strange view, because he's giving us the...more
Man On Pink Corner is the first 'original' story Borges ever published, yes? I like it, though it is a very odd shift in style from the rest of the book. Not incredibly impressed, however, because the twist doesn't occur because Borges is giving us a strange view, because he's giving us the...more
I wondered why Borges had regurgitated, in his own interpretation, a rogues’ gallery of historic figures who had met the most inglorious ends. Was this fiction, practice for the fiction to come, or a commissioned set of synopses of these historic villains’ lives? Then I stumbled on a Wikipedia entry that explained that as part of his editorial work at the newspaper Crítica, Borges had written these pieces, some as a cross between non-fictional essays and short stories, and the others as literary...more
These early Borges stories invite comparison with the Flann O'Brien of At Swim-Two-Birds. Borne aloft on simple declarative sentences, they offer a pleasing collision of history, folklore and fairytales. Many of them are funny and some are chilling. A few, sagging under their burden of data, never achieve lift-off. Pressed, I would nominate as my favorite either 'The Wizard Postponed,' or the one-paragraph wonder 'On Exactitude in Science,' which made me speculate whether the fictive transformat...more
Sep 17, 2012
Tanuj Solanki
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
argentina,
latin-america
According to Borges, the stories here were meant for nothing graver than light entertainment. But today their chief purpose may well be to provide access to the writer's early dabbling. And yes, there are numerous signs of what was to come. There are mirrors here, and recursive systems, and hoaxes, and some mind-boggling endings too.
Though the stories are straightforward, re-reading provides greater pleasures, as with all Borges. The trivia is that each story was written as contribution to a wee...more
Though the stories are straightforward, re-reading provides greater pleasures, as with all Borges. The trivia is that each story was written as contribution to a wee...more
Just finished Infinite Jest for the first time and it's nearly all I think about. Whatever else I read for awhile could very easily, by untimely default, fail to capture my full attention. This partly explains why most of these stories passed right through me. With that on the table, I admit to enjoying A Theologian in Death which immediately jumps out, solidly evolves, and ends in perfect brevity. That and a couple other stories in the Et Cetera section left enough of an impression on my distra...more
Normalmente se citan Ficciones y El Aleph como los mejores de Borges, pero este pequeño libro es excelente, si uno piensa que fue uno del los primeros libros de relatos de este escritor fundamental. La premisa es bastante simple: una colección de personajes infames de distantes épocas y geografías. Pero ya se encuentra la inigualable destreza de este autor. Muchísimas veces leyéndolo y releyéndolo tengo la sensación de que seria imposible escribir mejor estos relatos. En otras palabras: sencilla...more
http://okudumdanoldu.blogspot.be/2012...
Her ne kadar bitirmem uzun sürmüş olsa da çok eğlenerek okudum bu kitabı. Dünyanın ve tarihin her tarafından toparlanmış öyküler var bu kitapta. Sudan'dan Arjantin'e, Çin'den İran'a kadar. Aslında büyük ihtimalle gerçekten yaşamış kişilikleri alıp biraz çarpıtarak hikayeleştirmiş.
Esasen Arjantin'deki bir gazetenin pazar ekine yazdığı yazıların toparlanması bu kitap ama zamanında çok ses getirmiş.
Bendeki nüsha İletişim Yayınları 10. baskı. Bunu neden söylüy...more
Her ne kadar bitirmem uzun sürmüş olsa da çok eğlenerek okudum bu kitabı. Dünyanın ve tarihin her tarafından toparlanmış öyküler var bu kitapta. Sudan'dan Arjantin'e, Çin'den İran'a kadar. Aslında büyük ihtimalle gerçekten yaşamış kişilikleri alıp biraz çarpıtarak hikayeleştirmiş.
Esasen Arjantin'deki bir gazetenin pazar ekine yazdığı yazıların toparlanması bu kitap ama zamanında çok ses getirmiş.
Bendeki nüsha İletişim Yayınları 10. baskı. Bunu neden söylüy...more
I was actually pretty disappointed by this book. It's made of very short essays about some unkind people—knife-fighters, pirates, cultists—many of them figures from the footnotes of history books. Although I liked a lot of the ideas Borges presented in this book, I felt as though a lot of it fell flat. The best ideas are just mentioned in passing, and the longer passages seem to be made for the more mundane stuff. Perhaps it was the length of the pieces that prevented them from blossoming into s...more
A really short book which can be read in just one day, A Universal History of Infamy, shows once again the majesty of Borges with the words and why, in opposition to many latin american authors, his works feel closer to me. Because he does not talks about countryside people, who I am not related at all. Curiously enough, the only tale I wasn't very fond of is "the man in the pink corner" the one were he tries to use a regionalistic tone, writing in the dialect of the farmers of Buenos Aires.
A collection of short stories about some historic criminals, including a pirate, a gang leader, an impostor and a Wild West gunslinger. This is early Borges; moreover, it is Borges writing the factual, rather than the fantastic. However, in these stories one can see the emergence of some of Borges’s fictional techniques. In many passages, particularly those containing his catalogs, and those that include poetic as well as realistic details, Borges appears to be exploring those areas where the li...more
A collection of telling moments (frequently the final ones) in the lives of some bad people. I have read pretty much everything Borges published, so I cannot separate the young writer from the more mature one (who was clearly greater.) Even in these early stories based on true events you can find what made Borges a master - he condenses so many pieces of reality into what a true (and young) observer would see.
I shlepped through this one in Spanish, despite the very elevated language that left me reaching for the dictionary. Some of the tales are quite wonderful, others just grim. The interplay of fact and fiction has you wanting more to be true, or at least putting down the book and googling all manner of persons, places, and things to find out if they existed. Intellectually fun yet exhausting.
May 02, 2013
Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommended to Jayaprakash by:
jayaprakash@gmail.com
Another re-read. Young Borges working his way toward fiction by playing with fact. Perfidious individuals from history and legend stride through the pages of this slim book, spreading death and fear across 4 continents before coming to, for the most part, sticky ends. A great preamble to a unique body of work, but don't let this be your first or only Borges.
Como siempre los cuentos de Borges me dejan deseando más. En esta recopilación se acusa de no tener ideas propias y de tergiversar viejos cuentos que leyó, incluso hay uno de Don Juan Manuel que apenas sufre cambios. Todos son cortos y el libro se termina en menos de dos horas leyéndolo en el transporte público.
Si, como siempre menciona sus famosos espejos.
Si, como siempre menciona sus famosos espejos.
I refuse to give this less than three stars, though I enjoyed it less than the three stars denote. Early Borges' fascination with violence can only go so far for me, until it becomes boring. The execution of violence in latter Borges stories significantly differ from this early volume. Probably because there is a discernible higher objective in these latter stories such as "Emma Zunz", "The Dead Man" from The Aleph collection, and of course Ficciones' staples "Death and the Compass" and "The Sha...more
Transmutación de realidades entre personajes apócrifos o reales o anécdotas de hombres de las esquinas rosadas, que asombran por su imposibilidad, su utopia o por su urgencia de ser reales y meterse en nuestros días, donde, sin duda, la historia universal de la infamia nos avasalla.
Feb 27, 2013
Ariadna73
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
literature,
great-world-literature
Todos los adjetivos se quedan cortos para este maestro. Quién no lo haya leído tiene que dejar ahora mismo el computador y salir corriendo a conseguirlo. No se puede uno arriesgar a morir sin haber leído a Borges. Yo creo que por ese pecado sí habría condena en el infierno...
Es imposible que le de a Borges menos de 5 estrellas. Sus libros han llenado mi mundo de magia y enigmas siempre y cada una de las veces que los leo. Este, sin embargo, es otro de mis favoritos. Borges siempre será el mejor (para mí)
A catalog of bad persons and their wrongdoings. Entertaining and funny, and sometimes scary. There are many novels inside this encyclopedia novel. The tradition of writing down personal histories in compressed form (vignettes), popularized here by Borges, clearly extends to contemporary writers. Cases in point: Nazi Literature in the Americas and Written Lives. In these histories are multifaceted representations of multi-faced evil and vanity, potent even in small doses.
Een vervelende opsomming van feiten en verzinsels over allerlei booswichten uit de geschiedenis. De hortende vertaling maakt het lezen ook niet aangenamer. Wellicht leest het boek als een trein in het Spaans; in de Nederlandse vertaling komt de stijl uiterst gekunsteld over. Ik heb niets tegen bloemrijke taal (integendeel), of lange zinnen doorspekt met tussenwerpsels, maar dit loopt gewoon niet. Wat een verschil met de oude Russen, die ook zo breedsprakig konden vertellen, maar bij wie deze sti...more
This is the first book I read that written by Borges. I really enjoyed the stories, very interesting and as an illustrator I find them inspiring and full of adventures.
i find this translation cleaner and more elegant than andrew hurley's recent edition. otherwise, this is a slim collection of borges' influences and obsessions recast in his words.
Borges, maestro de maestros. Nunca me cansaré de releer este maravilloso librito de cuentos. "El hombre de la esquina rosada" siempre ha sido mi favorito ¡Adorable!
Mmmm!!! demasiadas espectativas creadas...supongo que no puedo pretender leer siempre obras maestras...alguna "no maestra" tiene que tocar..:)...y esta es una de ellas..:-D
Not Borges' best, but full of brutal historical stories. A lot of fun if you like horror, true crime, or noir.
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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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